Bounding Wet Dark

and the fields are wet too,

the grass, the questions

we press together to answer.

You are the last candle from the barn

I blow out. Sunday wish,

we are alive

only a short time. What is the purpose

of a field if not to lie in it?—

So we make the field

a field, myself

nothing more. Grasshoppers leaping

out of sight, I already know

what won’t happen. The night

pales at the pine scrim. We lie

beneath rotting stars.

“Bounding Wet Dark” is from Novena (Pleiades Press, 2017).