The moon, drunk on honeysuckle took its time to rise.
Sometimes we need to rescue what we love in order
 
to marvel at it, reach a hand beneath its soft bones
and lift it up. Call it self-preservation, the way 
 
I require the moon’s approval, always taking her 
portrait from the only angle she gives me. I seek 
 
wisdom in a moonlit field, forgetting the unplugged 
sun is the moon’s loss. Perhaps I need only to stand 
 
here, my camera’s hunger unrestrained, letting it stray,
the better to capture what’s so far distant. Maybe 
 
if I keep what I love beneath my eyelids, love will 
never leave. When the world goes toward its destruction 
 
without me on it, my one sweet hope will be never 
to fall through your fingers.
                        

reach into the brightness and pull out a word. 
Some birds have feathers but cannot wing. 
Our best escape is to dive into surf, or slice 
 
the sky reflecting it. Every time I tried, I got stuck 
between almost and not quite. I’d try to explain 
lilies but the scent scolds me into submission. 
 
Sometimes we Bogart, swizzle gin and slur 
at the piano. At one point we put aside charm, 
smear suave away with heel of hand, find a little 
 
clarity at the bottom of the glass. It takes a lot
of moxy to be a lily, to copy the industry of bees. 
Each time I sit between lava and the South Pole 
 
I weep for the glaciers. Write me an addendum
to the manual for the world. Court me with a riot 
of kindness, of blossoms red enough 
 
to break me alive. How many times must I open
the wardrobe of my past to find what led me to now? 
How many ancestors does it take to change the future?
 
Under water there are boulders no one knows about. 
Close to shoreline, full of secrets, rooted deep. 
Strange the shape of life’s poem. Strange the people 
 
who bring us to water, strange the milk-honey
of language spoken in films, where the male lead
snares his love with a crooked smile, a few bars 
 
played in lounge time, that of all the gin joints 
you’ve chosen mine. In a gallery of theories
you’ll have to decide which one speaks of thorns, 
 
which one seems sweet enough to break the toxic 
motherness tied to our ankles for what breaks us
into wonderment. Write me a loophole that tethers
 
me, moon-snail to wedding dress, gin joint to red riot
of roses, that feathered, we possess the ability to fly.