for brad

Denver spreads out below my window like a cemetery.

All cities look like cemeteries from far enough away-

            reaching to heaven

            from lands that know death well now.

This is not an impossible kind of sweetness you are asking for, across a wire-

that is to say,             Can we rise above ourselves?

I hope so.

I want love to be some measuring tool we use to find water
or at least an unbarrier to a future where not all the animals are gone.

I want to believe that two people together can, just by existing in a chosen knot, push back against each yawning particle of Fukushima’s broken heart

(The trees your parents are planting
the grey wolf deserted
the black dog we tell all our secrets to-    

Are they armed?
Are we enough for them?)

From the bathtub of this rented room I couldn’t tell you. Except to say the lessons are written and read aloud each time that mile-high sun turns its weird orange eye to the future

which is a copper glass building I can see into from here

to where reams of paper wait for the soft touch of clerical hands.