Fragile

Fragile

Sometimes sadness permeates my body from outside,

element moving through fragile membrane

or waxed paper gives beneath rain.

(It’s so fragile the thing which is hanging in the air

between us all

it’s so fragile as strung lights flicker and roll

along the limbs of sidewalk trees)

the downpour is sudden, and stunning, it’s so

fragile

creaking between the millstones

of our eyes, our warm and coursing bodies

Friend,  you’re with your chickens and I wonder what you are doing at this black moment. Your insides are clean and verdant, the rind of your heart is chartreuse, you stay light- you don’t get your feathers wet, and I don’t know how anyone manages that

when my brain itches and I sob sometimes. (I have not learned to be the infallible crier of our greater state of feeling.)

I sometimes hate it

that my only currency

is my own current.

I sometimes hate it that I do not yet know

everything, cannot yet gesture accordingly,

with grace

Friend your chickens outlived the brief thrash of coastal rain and they are fine. You say they stood there back to back

and that although you knew they’d be alright, something lodged a pit in you

Something lodged a pit in me in past. I do not remember the names of my home town’s streets. I left for colors of more vivid alacrity, and

harsher peals to meet,

a collision more meteoric.

How fragile, the revealing of our weather and humble force-field.

It’s so fragile