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Darling, I leave you the forever unblooming twig half-sunk in spring mud & the Nature that allows such delicate & lasting atrocity. Darling, darling, darling: my voice is a branch that would reach. I leave you the ragged sky, once full of cloud & now not. I leave you these things just as I leave you: graceful passage from one something to the next. Darling, even in this my voice dissipates into hush & whiffs of light, sun-thrown, hurtle into the ground.

to be reminded of the failing mainspring not sudden silence after the extreme figure but the relative a grimace told him to push the articulation farther the yet green used marks a tongues -width to tally a different sound preceded every word then took to term to feel hips as if new tangents were bolting

iridescence as old story, that brought cold from deep a chord moves into an upper chamber among rival unknowns declension toward one end—the merest light-sensitive dot a perfect world the strokes same light value runny, evened illuminations came from the plant the signal blinked search for asylum carried on in an inner distortion

a perfect world a trail widens out the code of indents channels serving both prey and interpreters arms back, re- laxed nerves as in a vat a perfect world placed hand on the breathing field the choices are circled until so dark they must be chosen over someone in estranged weather passed past “these doors don’t”

a perfect world living manifests of nipple and tip worked back into the locus one had thought delivered rectangles seep with the slight growing, to walk out onto them a perfect world the identities traced above a ground print as enlarged location, geographies of the whorl the smile that held no life but an erect ransom-shadow

Let us praise the twilight of freedom, brothers, the great year of twilight! A thick forest of nets has been let down into the seething waters of night. O sun, judge, people, desolate are the years into which you are rising! Let us praise the momentous burden that the people’s leader assumes, in tears. Let us praise the twilight burden of power, its weight too great to be borne. Time, whoever has a heart will hear your ship going down. We have roped swallows together into legions. Now we can’t see the sun. Everywhere nature twitters as it moves. In the deepening twilight the earth swims into the nets and the sun can’t be seen. But what can we lose if we try one groaning, wide, ungainly sweep of the rudder? The earth swims. Courage, brothers, as the cleft sea falls back from our plow. Even as we freeze in Lethe we’ll remember the ten heavens the earth cost us.

The clock-cricket singing, that’s the fever rustling. The dry stove hissing, that’s the fire in red silk. The teeth of mice milling the thin supports of life, that’s the swallow my daughter who unmoored my boat. Rain-mumble on the roof— that’s the fire in black silk. But even at the bottom of the sea the bird-cherry will hear ‘good-bye’. For death is innocent, and the heart, all through the nightingale-fever, however it turns, is still warm.

Let me be in your service like the others mumbling predictions, mouth dry with jealousy. Parched tongue thirsting, not even for the word— for me the dry air is empty again without you. I’m not jealous any more but I want you. I carry myself like a victim to the hangman. I will not call you either joy or love. All my own blood is gone. Something strange paces there now. Another moment and I will tell you: it's not joy but torture you give me. I'm drawn to you as to a crime— to your ragged mouth, to the soft bitten cherry. Come back to me, I'm frightened without you. Never had you such power over me as now. Everything I desire appears to me. I'm not jealous any more. I'm calling you.

Leaves scarcely breathing in the black breeze; the flickering swallow draws circles in the dusk. In my loving dying heart a twilight is coming, a last ray, gently reproaching. And over the evening forest the bronze moon climbs to its place. Why has the music stopped? Why is there such silence?

somewhere, a sun. below, boys brown as rye play the dozens & ball, jump in the air & stay there. boys become new moons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise -blue water to fly, at least tide, at least spit back a father or two. I won’t get started. history is what it is. it knows what it did. bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a boy color of a July well spent. but here, not earth not heaven, boys can’t recall their white shirt turned a ruby gown. here, there is no language for officer or law, no color to call white. if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call us dead, call us alive someplace better. we say our own names when we pray. we go out for sweets & come back. • this is how we are born: come morning after we cypher/feast/hoop, we dig a new boy from the ground, take him out his treebox, shake worms from his braids. sometimes they’ll sing a trapgod hymn (what a first breath!) sometimes it’s they eyes who lead scanning for bonefleshed men in blue. we say congrats, you’re a boy again! we give him a durag, a bowl, a second chance. we send him off to wander for a day or ever, let him pick his new name. that boy was Trayvon, now called RainKing. that man Sean named himself I do, I do. O, the imagination of a new reborn boy but most of us settle on alive. • sometimes a boy is born right out the sky, dropped from a bridge between starshine & clay. one boy showed up pulled behind a truck, a parade for himself & his wet red gown. years ago we plucked brothers from branches unpeeled their naps from bark. sometimes a boy walks into his room then walks out into his new world still clutching wicked metals. some boys waded here through their own blood. does it matter how he got here if we’re all here to dance? grab a boy, spin him around. if he asks for a kiss, kiss him. if he asks where he is, say gone. • no need for geography now that we’re safe everywhere. point to whatever you please & call it church, home, or sweet love. paradise is a world where everything is a sanctuary & nothing is a gun. here, if it grows it knows its place in history. yesterday, a poplar told me of old forest heavy with fruits I’d call uncle bursting red pulp & set afire, harvest of dark wind chimes. after I fell from its limb it kissed sap into my wound. do you know what it’s like to live someplace that loves you back? • here, everybody wanna be black & is. look — the forest is a flock of boys who never got to grow up, blooming into forever, afros like maple crowns reaching sap-slow toward sky. watch Forest run in the rain, branches melting into paper-soft curls, duck under the mountain for shelter. watch the mountain reveal itself a boy. watch Mountain & Forest playing in the rain, watch the rain melt everything into a boy with brown eyes & wet naps — the lake turns into a boy in the rain the swamp — a boy in the rain the fields of lavender — brothers dancing between the storm. • if you press your ear to the dirt you can hear it hum, not like it’s filled with beetles & other low gods but like a mouth rot with gospel & other glories. listen to the dirt crescendo a boy back. come. celebrate. this is everyday. every day holy. everyday high holiday. everyday new year. every year, days get longer. time clogged with boys. the boys O the boys. they still come in droves. the old world keeps choking them. our new one can’t stop spitting them out. • ask the mountain-boy to put you on his shoulders if you want to see the old world, ask him for some lean -in & you’ll be home. step off him & walk around your block. grow wings & fly above your city. all the guns fire toward heaven. warning shots mince your feathers. fall back to the metal-less side of the mountain, cry if you need to. that world of laws rendered us into dark matter. we asked for nothing but our names in a mouth we’ve known for decades. some were blessed to know the mouth. our decades betrayed us. • there, I drowned, back before, once. there, I knew how to swim but couldn’t. there, men stood by shore & watched me blue. there, I was a dead fish, the river’s prince. there, I had a face & then I didn’t. there, my mother cried over me but I wasn’t there. I was here, by my own water, singing a song I learned somewhere south of somewhere worse. that was when direction mattered. now, everywhere I am is the center of everything. I must be the lord of something. what was I before? a boy? a son? a warning? a myth? I whistled now I’m the God of whistling. I built my Olympia downstream. • you are not welcome here. trust the trip will kill you. go home. we earned this paradise by a death we didn’t deserve. I am sure there are other heres. a somewhere for every kind of somebody, a heaven of brown girls braiding on golden stoops but here — how could I ever explain to you — someone prayed we’d rest in peace & here we are in peace             whole                all summer