Exhaled from blue you rush
into sky, the forgotten everywhere
who nurses your flickering edge
with air borrowed from moth wing, you are
ascendant to the wood that is not you, swallower
of twig and lichen, plastic shard and whole homes
I can trust
you will burn me up, too,
an entire grove
I cannot recover or wet back
into being, but beneath my tender
and amber calloused sole I can somehow feel
a thousand sprout stems on the tip
of my mother’s hum
her raspy wet
suspended in charred stump
and stale smoke, even in the weep
of some scared kid screaming
it was a mistake, even in the tremble
and choke, the throat of all
jerking and salted with tears,
her bass note as breath
carries and you think you can’t hear
a hollow thing
but every instrument has a hole.