Even the Dog's Crying

I thought that I would never love, then you thickened
every lean thing inside of me, even my bones
flushed with too much marrow, and I marveled
as this glass girl melted and burned blissful, unknowing
she was damned.

Now, the seasons silvering between us elongate
like corseted spleens, thin and frail without breath,
constrained as empty rooms that narrow quietly
overnight, compact with stale air and the rumpled sheets
of hysterical dreams.

Why couldn't I be born a bird, bereft, yet nescient?
Or the slim wing I see at night, lying with you like a lover,
curled around your fragile flesh somewhere deep
in North Africa, the last thing in that wasteland left
knowing your name.



First in a series (perhaps?) of poems inspired by a WWII air force locket I acquired recently. They were given by the airmen to their girlfriends and wives before leaving for war. The reoccurring question: who was she that had this locket first?