For I,

I thought of you and bullets and the husk of ruin we are feeding

we know what is true,
Christ did not destroy the stone but rolled it.
turned over on a Sunday, i met a boy’s back
beginning an early morning beg: claw at me here.

We’d decided we didn’t need
the new guy before he arrived.
But he was a good worker,
good enough for some of us
to reconsider letting him go.

For M,

We could talk about the baby humpback who washed ashore with a belly of trash
and the net used for catching thousands of fish. How children

Go lightly. The way pain enters each day.

Light the candle of flowers that blooms
half-desiccated on the roadside.

if aurora borealises are any indication the extraterrestrials are at peace and the
definition of life is accordingly revised

You tell me I’ve given you something impossible. You
shake your head to the rhythm of my voice pealing you
are safe, safe;

It’s this way: after doing several loads of laundry,
or dusting every inch of slight surface in a home’s several rooms,