Half Moon

    
Half Moon
The smooth furnace of summer wet down in bushels of strawberry lightning. I felt each pinprick of heat and salt pass through my masc and sucked on the notes of the choir greedily. This city was built upon the ashes of glassworks, shipping containers, river barges, the constant ache of nylon rope, and piles of rock salt along the quay where cormorants sit on pilings to nip the icy pink and purple sky. In the parking lot, a forsythia closes its graven mouth & opens its yellow eyes. A scut of stars starts early as I sit inside my car, thinking about the librarians I met cleaning up the park on Saturday, one who told me that Lyme is the new AIDS and another who said she cured hers through dieting, meditation, sweatlodge, and exfoliation. We pushed rubber tires out of a clogged streambed with blackened palms. In the morning I fed the horses sugar cubes, peppermint candies & carrots too, cut into cuticles that would disappear into their gums. I wanted so badly to eat them myself. That summer we went to pick wild blueberries, we went to the waterfalls at the state line, we saw the water tumble down in great scallops from the tigereyed rock into its basin, each person's sunlit back dogged and mocked in a sopping sun. I had the feeling that time was running out & wanted to cry but didn't because it felt so lonely missing you & my dreams were teething.