Whoever’s good for more than seven words
shouldn’t wholly trust my compliments.
A sniper’s bullet outruns its sound,
word of it arrives too late.
My words outrun intent, I turn
my back on them and walk away.
I sleep among their fallen leaves,
I don’t dream of spring, I dream
of lightning bolts and floods
that loosen my grip on earth.
I dream of making a poem
of something better than words,
something like the betrayal in a tic,
a longing inviolable as an orbit.
