Devil’s Lake

A telegram in space remains cheerful,

intact. While I mistook the gloss

of a hard leaf for something good.

And I mistook a rock for the word dad,

which I don’t need, which I threw,

Not all Pianos in the Woods

Had the power to mangle me—

the breathing itself is the message,

the icy glass rivulets on limestone

in some gorge, under fixed shade of old hemlocks,

to which I was imprinted: this handless love.

The sound of wings patting a mass of leaves

caught in my mind, in which I stayed too long,

on a branch too small to be broken.

Now that I’m alive,

               & the animals in me battered back

into just this one: breath bag, light blot—

the sky packs

fatly around my ears and I’m alone

under the thunderstorm,

tall hot heart bleating whosoever

               gets this far gets to stay:

you

and me at the gross waterfall,

               hand on my black bikini

& the skin of the sky caves.

And it’s all sky. This pink blanket,

ancient vapor,

               the hum of horses

from somewhere. Come home,

says everything, he won’t love you back.