The clock here is quiet
so you make ticking sounds with your tongue in the roof of your mouth. You dissolve
hours like a mortar and pestle, all grain and rub; a lesson
on how space teaches time. What do you call awe that doesn’t know it is awe?
You walk outside and everything
is the exact color of the sky. Trees aren’t solitary, you know—
they can keep the stump of one felled alive by sharing nutrients through roots,
they can bend and bow to make way for saplings, they can poison each other without
meaning to, without ever knowing they die. The ticking sound is also a way to call
an animal—the difference is in how you hold
your lips. The climate is changing.
Somewhere on a mountain, the trees are saying to one another
follow me follow me
follow me
As a Question
there was a rope swing
and white hydrangea trees
blue sheets on a bed
it’s the day your mother dies
again each year we see one another
less and less I open the door
and snow moves across
the floorboards
I want to say something like
I never left but in my new life
I try not to lie.
the cold rustles the dog
and he turns in his sleep
you turn your palm up finally
still as a question
and here is where the curtain
parts the light that falls
over itself we don’t bother
to ask
where the recycling goes
we just take it to the curb
like faith