*
Shielding your lips this stone
knows all about winds
living in caves, began
as dust then kept in place
neither mornings or kisses
though there’s still the pieces
a grave here, here more and you
trying to remember how dirt
became your cheeks, caressed
as if rain is just another word
–your only sky left in the open
for its handfuls and hidden flowers
that have forgotten how to breathe
are devouring the mud, mountains
and this ritual water swept away.
*
You no longer bathe
though a cold rain
flows through one arm
grieves the way each river
carries off its slow descent
with a deadly hold
–around these gravestones
your smelly leather jacket
still arranged so its sleeves
spread-eagle, are packed
with a sky already darkened
by the more and more feathers
that have no heading yet
and your shoulders without hope
weightless over the water.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Osiris Poems published by boxofchalk, 2017. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this link.