This pass into space

creates half-chances. 

One part: the body

 

brought with it. 

We were silent, unspecific. 

The other: starve-heart-

 

arisen, a slow-twitch

muscle of discussion,

damp in the ungroomed

 

drama of leaves

on our knees. Crisp seeds

tumbled off stalks

 

cut sharp by the known

future, not what we

were-to-be. 

 

Your love of fear. 

My darker flame. 

The natural wing. 

 

I watched a sunset

with no comment. 

The sky spilled-

 

upon with thick ink,

a half-moon,

a day had been. 

 

Those same seeds

descended all night

in sacred fashion. All night

 

I heard them hit the earth. 

I heard birds chirp

in the dark. 

 

Below the dirt,

worms & buried fur

& new millennium

 

time-capsules took in

vibrations. Tremors

of seed-storm. Constant. 

 

Awakened was my far-off

awe of your every moment,

each loose clip

 

in your hair or kept

on your sweater. 

I’m an almanac

 

of false frights, freight

folded from its rails

falling from a cutbank

 

in the floodplain, storm

warnings on static,

news of a pet

 

dropped soft

in the ditch, all loosening-

into, hatching bacteria. 

 

It’s almost rain-

smelling while some bright

bird wrapped

 

in its own wings

rolls in the road

in the wind. 

 

Not everything responds

to sustenance

or is thus sustained. 

 

So the strange-triangle

hangnails of dried-up

earth appear. So life

 

sinks out of reach. 

Is such wakelessness

ours to keep?

 

My better explorations

of mossed thought in your eye?

In unspecified space

 

a whistle splits at your lips,

blown free of itself.

& a terrible calm

 

climbs over me. 

The whistle spreads,

singing emptiness

 

loses hope of you

falling in. Emptiness falls

asleep like a theater.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOSEPH JOHNSON is a teacher in New Meadows, Idaho. His work has appeared in Big Big Wednesday and Forklift, Ohio.