I read you

moon

I read to you.

But not in words.

In my lungs.

Beyond this wide sky

the only silence

is

between you

and my closed morning

window.

Spring is full

on us—slim birch,

verdant maple.  Looking

too long is in-

toxicating,

 it stops

being seen. 

Like infinite Zebra

backs on the Nambia

plains.  A herd

of blur and nausea.

I’m glad

you are only one.

Imagine!

if you were numberless.

We would not need

limbs.

—we’d abandon

feet and flight outright

and only rise to the surface

of it all

when the burning

memory

walked in our sand-

scorched

  booming lungs.

But you are one.

And I am one. 

I really can’t read

  you. Really, you read

me, soaked

or dry, silent atop

this skin, a cacophony

beneath it,

blossom gone to a

thousand seeds stroked

by wind.

The alphabet

of May.

And when your wane

shrinks inside of me

my tongue thickens

through you.

Prick it, drain it into

a thimble.

Pour it all out

when you are new.

When the salt

at the bottom of us all

has turned solid

and gives you,

from where I sit

a saliferous keep,

a castle of paper

 open on my lap,

fanned at random

by a seed-

laden wind,

and written in,

herds kicking up dust

as they run.