You let your iridescent nets down,
catching more than intended. My breath's song
uncovered its coda, clamoring to ring
in an era of breathlessness, threshes a lip
between teeth, traces jutted collar-bone
with finger-tip, a child loose on a vibrant farm.
Your future dwells on a foregone farm.
Bottomless reality perpetually lets down.
The grass beneath you has been fed by bone
since before we were born— carbon's swan song—
and the quivers you hear are a lower lip,
hung up on the radius of a ring.
From the rafters of the outer ring,
I watch the distant workings of the farm,
where you stand in crowded splendor by the lip
of a small pond— light lowers down
past the cattails, stars thrash their heavy song,
dusting shadow with particles of bone.
You were hardly more than water and bone—
I wrung your shoulders, left a ring
of condensation beneath the eyes, a part of the song
you had always passed through. These farm-
hands are happiest when burning down
the barn. Sweat glistens above the lip,
brimming with light. Your holy lip
terrifies, plunges my tongue toward hip-bone
straits. Tastes your water as it drips down
my chin, plucks your immaculate ring
from its altar. I would bet the farm
that once is enough to burn this song
into your body, forging a new song
in the garage of your thunderous lip.
I am rich— your presence all the farm
ever needed to carry this satchel of bone
beyond, across the divide, into the ring
where lives are raised to be cut down.
A diaphanous lip— woven bone—
song in the shape of a luminous ring,
and us on the farm, letting each other down.
