The low river that stumbles under a canopy of oaks
feeds on the banks’ eroding; it muddies
our ascenion as we rush by in ragtime.

Our lives began in the sweat of a guitar singing over
the thump thump thump
of a bass and drum,

We became lost in silence, screaming
to hide in that soft melody

as it rises from a plaza just north. It begins
on a dirt hill where the wind pulls
the clouds down, it ends

when we turn to stare and wonder why. As it tends
to distract us from the flowers around
the grassy knoll, the rivers bend,

leaving many trees before becoming the sea
and returning as rain. Let’s fall again.
If you look closely you can still see the rainbow at midnight,

your dark eyes peering into the cool
blue pools of mine where a spark grew to a flame
and in burning commanded our vision, the angry

blind that only now lifts when we can’t
look back. So take my hand and walk
with me from the forest to a field of poppies
far from Westminster
toward a horizon draped in sunrise;

the tide pool where we spin, where pure water
becomes ocean, where we can be hydrogen
and fend off the urge to turn, head

back down to become the sky and swim.