Make Love Through a Darkening Wellness

for DQ




Who could have envisioned so many birds
as many as there were when the whistles blew
without any sign of obstacles to stop the outward flow.
Without reservation of knowledge.

But the me within each is a city of use a point
that would move to another and spend his days
replenishing the air with destinations to paper.
To the margins of the paper’s horizon.

We were sent to the entrance from which to write
these apologies. A page each a day until it became
too hard for all of us to read each other and know
the names of the sounds.

I heard myself called from down below once. A sentinel
on a wire fence. Near the house of Golden Stops. He had
so many feathers on his belt from the ones who came
to the summons.

Had I gone I may have learned something. Or my head
found its way to the grand cabinet. A mistake you may not
make again. Below I saw him give his large collection of buoys
back to the dark sea.

It was not a gift. More than that if both parties are too wary
to accept a gift or the giving of one it becomes a verse. A social
contract between thought and the beings that have been engaged
in big sets of thought together.

While they were tinkering we made off with some old clothes.
Some tools that should have served them better and been seen
as more important. The clouds approaching make that a moot
point now. We know what to do.

If you make a light with your wings he said the whole vista will
turn about and seek out the ones who made it find faces discernable.
A line is always farther from you than from where you cut through
the hardened surfaces.

In this was a clue that went unnoticed.

Does the fact of the birds make flight? When it began we might
have made circles that remained where we had been. Viewable
if only to those who see patterns on blanks between trees often.
What we fly to last will not be the end.

A wind came up and we stayed there above his keep for years.
These are the ways their connections were kept alive here. About
the one I sought she was among those who thought up the very city
and said now you fly off and become old and quiet.

Along a faint line of light I first glimpsed her again and saw them.
The parts that had been missing. That fit the tools we’d stolen.
If only I could have fought the wind and captured that shard of
him. Such a change would have rewritten us.

These are now the days of being carried. The pages all purse
their lips and stop up their ears to this new noise. Moving across
this new sky with several sheaves of the sentinel’s favorite paper.
Can you hear the air sing? Look up at the formations?

There will be as many as you think you need to begin
another new settlement. In every wing there will come
in a while a complete set of changes. They form a space
for your sun. Blacken or brighten.

They have only ever been one pair.