I am not the meadow I was yesterday
and my body is part of a larger body
whose fingers cannot scratch the middle of its back.

The antagonist and the main character
are in a relationship that feeds the rain, the dirt
that stretches past a measurable end-point.

The crickets in the phone’s music
and the foxes crying on the hill,
bridge the past tense into the taste of the air.

I’m on a beam of light between nights in the graveyard,
waiting on my parents’ front porch for a song
and the smell of her armpits under my nose.

I’m sure I’ve been here before, the dark cloud,
the sweet eyes above me, and somehow,
I’m seeing as if I’m not here.

The consciousness of history colors the trees
and I’m sorry I’m not more,
in the way a river can’t water the inland roots
or the bird’s voice covers less distance than its wing.