For Brett

 

You play the spoons on your thigh, I play
the knives, beating them against my chest like fists.

I watch the moonrise, a lenticular spotlight over New York,
you wander the desert, Mojave, giant sand, nuclear lens landscapes,

a Cold War Geiger counter, images moving needle-like East and West,
left and right. Inside I am a whirly bird, flailing in never ending circles,

You are a slingshot, catching the wind.
Yet, somehow, we are yoked together.

And I don’t know if you pulled me, or if I am pulling you,
Maybe this is the back draft drawing us back together, or flinging us forward.

I imagine all that humanity has done, good and bad, has drawn us together,
And our son is the syzygy of the moon and Earth and Mars.

The hour between the wolf and dog is calling and I must go,
Coyotes yip and cackle in the desert, my eyelids are heavy, your lips numb.

It is time to fall asleep and rise together in the silent eclipse of an atomic sunset.