With muted amber lament
somehow I have lost your image
in lowest clouds

where the bones of complacent mountains
cling to the first bayonets of morning.

Ungrasp with difficulty the ebony fire of sunlight
and arrange diagonally the bodies of weed—

the ground gives silent warmth;
stagnation in yellow, subdued castings

brittle blacks of yestertime
circle and release

in fields that harmonize and weep.

Yet the bloodflow of your form
is a luminous crest of plumage
almost within reach of my embrace

and if offered the choice of infinity
in the barest fraction of all that is possible

I’d ask only for the simplest understandable
good-bye.