San Pedro Sula

Gangsters roam the last night on earth,
falling as it does, where she is, too,
no phone, like the old days when I dropped
into a hole and no one knew. What else
but love under a sky heavy enough to crush, and me
on rusted bedsprings with beer and soccer on TV.
I wonder if she’s warm, if the frozen lake
will hold, if wind snaps the sparks
of her fire toward the stars. Here mountains
turn to ghosts that mumble in the hall,
and I leave salt sheets to walk past tangled squatters,
sea-sighs of invisible women, a happy bowman
hunting sparse boulevards for the blink
of distant light. Nothing says good morning
like gunshots at dawn, and she, her feet in snow,
steps past pine and hemlock toward a cold car
she hopes will start. Snowflakes
sparkle on pastel, and skin burns to believe
air is water, the cracked sidewalk
a coral reef. Beauty swims mute with ugly, and I,
big with both, feel the roll of their affection
make new words for old things to say.

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Always the Moon

Just you and me and the dumb
moon like every promise ever made
broken and made again
following us through trees and me high
with the love I’d just tossed away.
Did we talk? Did words matter? Did we
hold hands, lost and thrilled
to be so close in that pretty light?
I ate little, slept in the rain, and when you left
counted the full ones into the teens
and even after I lost count never
trusted again I might not sink
and think I was swimming, fall
and think I was flying, or drunk
on its light, take the dark road home.