Thank you for your drooping branches,

Graying at the stems and leaves splaying

Between me & a race soldier’s bullet.

I never knew what made the wind

Break so forcefully – left and unfettered,

Swaying the grass in unison like a hard jazz step,

Seconds before the next Martyr’s lament

Whisked in quarter time to the silent pistol’s snap.

Some kind ghost always followed,

Saying which foot deserved what step and

At what time – one before the other, left to right,

Right to left, never both planted in place

Thanks for swatting away the intent:

That hard, gliding metal puncturing

Against the anarchy of sunlight.

I was instantly back in West Oakland

Wrapped in a woman’s sweet colors,

The ends of dark tendrils lightly gripping our backs

To be shattered by the the glow of daylight

When I reached up and brushed away

The branch from my eyes.

Thanks for the weathered crimson leaf

That pointed to the gleaming alloy

Mediating how it is to break

Like haze over tidepools,

As I slow-danced a deadly

sway with broken gods.

What made me peek the honeybee

Dangling on a single tightrope,

Flapping wings into futility,

Like time-dated propulsion,

Is beyond me.  Perhaps the moon

Grew weary of the glistening bones

Laying topside as ritual; just maybe

The moon simply knows better.

Again, thank you for another day

Past death’s promenade blasting

Through a time warp.  I’m still faltering

Within its silence. And I don’t know

Why the sunlight touched the stainless steel,

Why something stood among those lost leaves

And moved when I moved.