and blue

in the place that will be the home of
your heart, hands and eyes
i see grass, i saw snow (sitting on
a steamer trunk, agent of silent shrouds)
and blood red, blue, and i cried silently for you
because nothing in you
told me that you ever would:

then i was nowhere close
to gone already, and two
halves cut three in three with the demand and
little tri-colored braids come undone as
we run
and the pieces of that heart
you brought west come apart
and if we did not find
so many words soft as “baby, you’re losing it”
to whisper across the dark
we would see simply
“wounded knee”
in black letters, cold crossed but still:

the softly crumbling dreams
on the trail of what
was it, me, everything fell
and the urge to bless
the broken road blossoms—

but you’re beautiful. in your simple
little way—every little piece
that seeped into the ground, the grass, the sky
that terrifies me as much as… i just love you
in visions of three kinds of thread
floating together to stay apart
and not turn light lavender
(as when lilacs last…)

it is this brutal sky blue
which never can stand alone
and never can stand for less than nothing, for
nothing more than a war, it is more
and rivers flood their banks with salvation
for their torn, scarred, beloved nation
and it is only the best we can do
to cry at pieces, smile at a
summer night—
and be stronger than stone, and red, white