Michael Maestlin Called to Say that It's Just One Decimal Place Off

do you remember what you've dreamed? the notion is silly. It resembles a clown-faced tenderness. do you remember the blackberry bush in the backyard that would bloom in spring. do you still have that scar from slipping in the brambles? do you remember late nights with just the kitchen light ? there is a longing for you, for those afternoons and evenings. it was new for a moment. everything dissolves in days. i have come to you across thousands of pines. you were a finger width away last night as i checked the map. mexico was periwinkle stretching out below. does distance signify endless desire. have you been back to the island in the river we camped on? there's a woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk of that black birch. do you still agree with Hass about each particular being the falling off from a first world of undivided light? we caught in the muddy places. the father's body is the numinous flesh. do your r's still look like m's when you try to write in cursive? did you send your elegy by correspondence? did you save my drawings? the words are hanging on one thousand walls. my hair is in your hands. the places remember how love was made. did you manage to braid your beta keratins? did you take to the sky on feathers foreign and wrong? i love the orange silver of your shoulders. the leaves are turning a shade reminiscent of you. it is all about the old. after a while, I understood. do you hurt? do you still wonder at the grief? i have drunk my weight in wine one thousand times. have you been thinking? are you at a loss? this world is almost a boat. sometimes i can feel the small fish beneath the willows. was there a woman? i felt her presence like a thin wire of salt. it hardly had to do with her. do you feel you have your justice? you've been lingering in my whiskey. have you found continuing pleasure? who rests their weight full against your collarbone these days? does your voice still sound the same, a soft rumble washed out by the noise around it? i'm still allergic to bee stings. i've been roasting pumpkinseeds this fall. do you ever remember the taste of the shoulder? do you think of the scent of the arm? is your thirst still tragic? i am still drunk. are you still querulous in the mornings? do you still take that tone? i felt dismantled in the thing you said. have you made friends? do you still bake your own bread? i've stitched you in the cotton running out beneath the floorboards. did you find your clarity? i've only got the general idea. i swear it's been that way since childhood. are you still sometimes violent? would you still mock me when I say words like luminous? where are you holding on?


if it comes to blows, i will lay you out.