Poetry

Gaps in the Gums

Thirty years ago there was a golden sun /
Whose light fed a pear tree

The coots came home the week the bombs began./
The dark dimples of their bodies/
rested in the divots of the ripples

At Tenochtitlan, the sun beat down harshly / The sweltering heat made the gravel and sand swim and go hazy

I don’t have anything happening to me that hasn’t already muddled its way through you.

Little moments of beauty and cruelty that excite its angelic tendencies

Did fires burn through the last ancient woodland? /
Boughs that breathed the air before us, /
Reached deep into soil our fingers never touched.