in the thick
of thin hours
o what viscous
thoughts & what
vast waded spaces

i've laid hold upon
a hideyhole home
halfway

up a mountain
midst woods
& wild wanders

its sentinel calico
dark atop a thin
trunk pedestal
over-shoulder
surveyed me

shadow sphinx
still let me past

& deer desperate
for summer dregs
dare at the doorstep
among a deciduous dusk

twirling

my favorite aunt
starved herself
to death in throes
of acute early
onset alzheimer's

brain & body
inverted
devoured
themselves

we buried her today
but bid goodbye
a ways back

maybe it was
better she looked
so like & unlike herself

i held a barely there
bony hand &

remembered

a beau geste
of bullshit at best

to translate
this world
thru myself

rearrange
little rows
of letters
just so

so surely one
might surmise
i must on

some level
mean
something

a shorter
search term for

how to heap
understanding

or patience
or space
or all

of the above

to be fallible
& human
& real

in real places