something like forgetting, a dusty let-go

Gone brittle, all over in dust
winter’s long whooped
its last shudder,
its final heaving chill.

On a corner I remembered you
in shades of geometry,
slender lamps slouching
dense yellow heads.

I knew long ago
how to sing out
in years and seasons,
but now you are lost on me,
plural, occasionally mysterious
or very truly passed.

My maps are fatigued,
estranged. They feel
too much
too often.

My maps are blank or
coffee rung. Mountains tower like monsters,
skylines shatter the grid.

I knew once how to cough up words for dirt roads, long slow
veins branched at significant moments, family plots
splintered off then full stop where the hatchet’s dug up,
rotten through wet, sagged across the palms.

I lived long with gravestones,
lived long on this decay
fended thirst with ashes
caked at the base of my gums,
breathed in the over echoed air of the last hymn
stuck on the high noon of a bright stubborn old day.