Quick fixes.

We are not unstoppable.

What pours from our leaky faucets

Will contaminate the water of the world.

There are pewter-lined realizations and plumbers'

Quick fixes

But in backing away the system of sewage is clear.

We drain when we fetch what we swear we can hold.

The way we think about things together.

The nearest things are often the fastest,

Heavenliest

--and care-free:

But they're cursed.

It has taken us so long to puzzle out our inborn meaning

Bracelets droop on our girls' wrists, and the music that surrounds us

Is a kind of ebullient junk.

Look past the surging welt of a hill where

One will go and be discovered,

And one girl will set her dream against the malignant stars.

The anniversary landscape.

"That never get up no more place is here"

-Langston Hughes, 'Graveyard'

The wind is full of breath.

As if coaxing water from the sea, or

The broadest tear ducts,

The Earth must sing.

Such green songs are these--

Bereft of patterns.

They remind me

That this shower like so many showers

Must fall,

Flooded with cheers of defeat. Meanwhile.

The wind is full of breath.

Purity.

Please, never forget

Purity--

Not as a law,

But as a blinded promise.

And promise to remain unkept.