DESIRE

        Say I chew desire and water is an explosion

        of sugar wings in my mouth.

        Say it tastes of you.

        Say I could drown because you left

        for the time it takes a blackbird to understand

        a pine tree.

        Say we enter the pine woods at dawn.

        We never slept and the only opium we smoked

        was what became of our mingled breath.

        Say the stars have never learned

        to say good-bye.

        Say all of this is true and more

        than there are blackbirds

        in a heaven of blackbirds.

for J.