This Insatiable August
Waiting for God or elephants
laughter wanders the empty yard
with the smell of ripe peaches.
Rescuers twist through the high Rocky’s
searching for the lost boy,
or the glove of his body.
Right now, a wasp
walks on the boy’s delicate eyelid.
The grass around him moves like a skirt.
All those ripe peaches will go unplucked.
Perhaps the boy is looking for spaces
in the fence, or dolphins in the meadow
decorated with flags. This insatiable August
cleaves to the rescuer’s bodies.
Their losses laid out like feathers.
Koel for Shu
you should have been buried with an Irish whistle playing but all I hear are cellos and the whoosh of the gas fireplace turning on in the living room as I imagine the cremation of your body covered in quilt pieces I wish you could have been buried in a wood coffin wrapped in the celery quilt