[Untitled]

They cannot destroy people without destroying land,
Which is why
When the doctor asks                 Where is the pain coming from
I am compelled to say                 The mountain             The scent of footpaths
thawing soil                                The pine heartwood at the left of spring, still divided.

It is the mist in the early morning that turns
the sparrows’ call into glass breaking and                     Not the red
in my hand. In my chest and eye. When all the goldenrods
are late for blooming, when I’ve skittered over a landmine,

You’ve hand-first, irrigated the moat of the empire away from its center,
away from its severed wrist, doing what water knows best:
mending the ebb between spaces,                                         trickling bone into bone.

I borrow the song of the mourning dove                     while you are full of living.
Where does it start?                                             Does it disperse,
            into a profusion as
            green as a

                                            sprawling



                                                                                                            place?