& too much beer, waking up in the blue
beam of the television, my head in your lap,
how I could hear the last birds
gathering beneath your skin. You smelled like mint

& the cold blade of the kitchen knife, & our laughter
left teethmarks those long July days,
as the dark beyond our door culled its armies,

a combustion of insects & heat
hitching our house to the blind grasses, the pasture
sliding away like a calm sea.

Love, what leaned in & drank from the eyes of the horses
as their silhouettes passed like slow ships?
What folded its thin wings & sank into our hearts?