with the slops and spit of days 
left rattled and cast along the greens 
in the nest of a tattooed dark, 
you became a plucked dandelion as 
the moon silvered, burning stars 
curled jade in your operatic eyes, 
trilled by a thousand hands of pine—

it was not often that you were so
bestially white yet so sad: hip-bones
crinkled and crushed into distortion
of plumes, shoulder-blades felled
wings in flight, heart claimed shadows
where there was only artificial light—

with vast skies of weather swung 
to nude flesh of head for sins, grades 
of thunder carved to lobes, the effects of
rain in small flicks from the styles on 
cold-ribbed air, you were omen for
inarticulate fireflies, the singed pasture
where the last summer trod, a scrape
for everything small—