Love Poem from Demolition Gorge

When she said,"Those hanging baskets of flowers look so pretty,"he heard, "hanging baskets of fog."He couldn't stop what happened next.On the meadow, mountain sage.Extra light falling off pines like in a picture.Whatever burns, bathing in flames.Hurtling off broken abutments,hold me, sang the grateful blossoms.What does fog know?"Always let the soul stand ajar," she said.Now he was a bowl of boy tears climbing into rocky crags.West of the YMCA of Heaven.Up on Raven Drive.Now from where wild horses gallop away into thunder, and raindropsstamp circles on dark lakes of hope in Loveland,vanishing across mountain heights,a mouse chirp of secret joy.

She hangs my heart in petunia basketsfrom streetlight stanchions in the pearl hour morning,and I keep thinking all day of things to tell her, reasonsto lean, whisper in her ear. Forget all nightwhat it hurts like, pressing my lips to her hair.Her hoodie smells like fog.Her voice reaches in me like sunlight gaining ground.My body barely registering at the door of breath.Where my soul flies out, a world that wants for almost nothing.A buy-one, get-one on everything, sweet alyssum,flats two for one at the failing nurseryon Brewery Street by the river.