—PLEASE DON’T QUESTION MY DEVOTION

Potential

I feel sorry for the stars

with their backs pinned

up against the wall,

their toes and fingers quaking,

nearest neighbor lightyears away. 

The moon is in no better position,

flat as a manhole, its cover blown,

every lovely sonnet falling

through the ether without

ever having been read or heard. 

You made me think

differently about tomorrow,

about never,

about ending. 

…I can’t wait till I

    see you tomorrow. 

…I can’t wait to give you

    my never-ending kiss. 

You did something to me

and, no matter the

lengths or odds,

I can’t take it back. 

You made me feel lucky and rich,

a bee in a field of clover,

a kid with all that swollen candy.

You did that.

You calmed the tempests,

the oceans,

tamed my wayward whims.

You shook the sky,

caused me to reconsider

the entire scope

and head space

of the word Hope.

Duped

I died today, but you weren’t there to notice.  They buried me in a field of elder straw where the shrews and deer mice play.  A herd of elk thundered over me, their hooves punching fists into the soil around my coffin.  In the distance, a murder of crows tore a hole in the lining of the sky before ripping themselves apart.  By nightfall, the rains came in torrents, seeping through the ground like hands sifting sludge, tapping on my wood-and-brass casket.  For a moment, I thought it was you, coming to see me, to say you missed me, but then I realized you were gone, and that I was dead.