Warm Morning

THIS MORNING WAS A RIVER TO WHICH I SAID

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hello river, you are upon us.
We hid behind a ledge & you
threw yourself over it, sparkling.
Every part of us is made
of the thing that moves you.
We are forests that
forgot we were forests &
started kissing, pressing
our walnut trees so close they
would crack.

Hello river, meteors have been found in you.
You, ground! You, river! You, stream!
this has been done before,
but I’m doing it again,
because I thought it was beautiful.
Hello Meteors, this is the sequel
to a movie that won oscars
but this movie won’t win any
oscars because the love
interest has already played
the dad in too many
disney movies where middle
schoolers make a million bucks
carving seahorses from rotting wood
& selling them as idols to cults
of younger middle-schoolers.

Hello love interest, I am holding you hostage
in a shoebox with airholes
to take to school under my coat.
Dear airholes, I am making a million of you like stars
in a dream I had about
a star-ceiling’d church of
cats with holywater dishes
& churchmice heroes
who fought valiantly for reformation.
Hello other forest,
I have collected 10000 seashells
I am making into a blanket for you
with gentle crimson thread &
sweet woodsmoke.
I want to see you wear it
over your head on some cold spring
Saturday we don’t leave the house
& sing songs about mothers
into each other’s mouths
until our tongues have fresh newborns
we can name Elijah 1 & Elijah 2
with hands like miniature bears,
the softest skin anyone’s ever felt.

THIS MORNING I HAD A DREAM ABOUT A VERSION

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of you with horse eyes, but now
the restaurant is closing & so
you spring for the check &
we walk down by the river &
look out at the boats in the night.

Three boats are having trouble
getting up a waterfall & we help
because from where we are
standing they just fit on our fingertips.
They take turns thanking us &
give you the magical power of
water & now my hand goes
through you unless it’s cold out.

From there we walk to the park
& I tell you three words I made up
& you say the middle one means feeling
like you are made out of roller-
coasters that are on fire &
every single thing is made out
of rollercoasters on fire, on
fire but still running, & when you
touch another thing or touch
your arm with your hand or
touch your fingers together the
rollercoasters crash & everyone
who wasn’t burned up already dies &
they show the footage on the
news each day & your parents
email you links with isn’t this horrible?
in the subject.

When you tell me this it makes me
swell up with love for you.
I am a wasp for you.
I am this swollen-up wasp for you & we
are held here together in a poem that
could only hope to contain what we feel.

You take a seat on a bench &
say the last word (of the words
I made up) means walking through
the shampoo aisle in walgreens
& overhearing someone you can’t see
say I just can’t take it anymore

THIS MORNING WAS A SONG YOU

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had stuck in your head for weeks
& I know this because you installed
a zipper & opened your head up
in the back & the most beautiful
sounds came out. The zipper’s teeth
looked like the fir trees along I-94
north nn the way to your parents’ house
when we were singing sound of silver
at the top of our lungs to keep away
the slippery gray sky that had been
holding us between its teeth like grapes
& I zipped you back up & gave you a
kiss that meant I need you to hold me
like a small bird born too early.

THIS MORNING WHEN WE ENTERED

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our apartment for the first time
after a long time away we entered
a movie set made exactly to look
like our apartment. The props
staff had done a remarkable job
finding the small brass cat figurine
with just the right level of tarnish,
but the dimensions were all off
in some way we couldn’t name.

Wardrobe handed you a dress
that was exactly like the one you
were wearing, but in a minutely
shifted shade of pink & the floral
print somewhat smaller.
They handed me an old t-shirt &
cutoffs just like the ones I was
wearing but I didn’t need a belt
with these, didn’t have to keep
pulling them up & the shirt had
a picture of a mother & baby fox,
the two of whom had moved just
slightly from how they had been
screened on the one I had been
wearing.

I turned on the bath to find the hot
& cold had been switched
& as I undressed our two small
cats now jumped eagerly into the
water, playing in it the way we had rolled
& kissed in the ocean on our time away.

As I laid back in the tub I looked
up to see that the ceiling was
now painted with clouds & the
cinematographer tilted a camera
up to reveal a different ceiling, filled
with live horseshoe crabs mating
in the dim light coming through
our windows.

In the pocket of my cutoffs I found
a lottery ticket with a note written
in a loose scrawl on the back,
the lines curving wildly up and
down the little rectangle.
You read them aloud with some
difficulty against the soft clicks of
horseshoe crab shells bumping up
against one another.
In god’s presence it is
possible to always be happy.