Fall Ivy
there are words that grow in misery
from corners in your throat
from music in your guts.
i have wrapped and coiled
as best i could
around starlit nights
when stone fruits and wax shells
overwhelmed the defenses
stormed the gates
and laid bare the jagged slopes of wrought tendons.
had i only my hands, surely,
heaven would not have heard me
but in the grinding of my bones into new shapes and sizes.
but words from misery speak in evenings
and twilights
in blues and dims and dark
in bent and burning and burnt.
words that can be coiled like vines
down your shoulders
down your hands
tracing some path that we
find a mystery.
vines that show that this thing here,
beneath its coat,
has lived
long enough to be trusted.
