Homeland

It’s the kind of love that touches everything at once

& takes tiny pieces, stolen when it loses 

& he holds all those coffee stain relics 

They’re clay icons on an old embroidered shelf 

Model airplanes hanging in a kitchen

Wings want for animation 

A permanent interlude

They made the handles of cast iron pots 

And egg shelled jars of salt 

Thoughts but not wholes 

He said I’ll carry you to the ocean dear 

But forgotten in the dark,

The flesh was left to seer

What is the house 

With no beings to people 

(when the universe peoples - AW)

But crumbs of wasted days 

Fallen from my bright den fires

Four chords of a half heard scale 

Burnt books I won’t read

Dried okra blossoms and forgotten spoiled dregs

Now a faded edifice 

Ruffles left on the living room floor

Where love lept to the other side 

Gold’s stroked abundance there

Where babes stay born from lightning