I opened your liquid dawn with my ring finger
drips plumed from bigger steam puffs;
I licked your crema, listened
to the ripped plush whispers
but there was nobody there, thus
I was left with a leaf’s wine:
you left
every French pressed forest murmur
here’s Kintaro bowing to your kimono
here’s an obi, wandering
the fields of the carcass savannah
countless rice paddies, falling,
gently,
into an ocean of your mouth –
the texture of bean grinds
like my stubble on your supple lips.

I first came here in middle fall
a hidden place in the dark pines
when hunter's instinct came to call
and led me 'mongst the wild and vines

Along a road near disappeared
shoulders slumped and crown eroded
and homeplace where old shade trees reared
tall but of leaves then unloaded

The home and barn both fallen down
with piers and chimney slowly crumbling
miles and miles from nearest town
or highway's distant diesel's rumbling

Let's dwell in the mystic land,
where birds and humans,
fly hand in hand
across the vast sojourns,
of deserted life.

Sort some parcel into a mail bag
Place the slip in a wrong box
Somebody somewhere somehow suffers
Count the cost on consumables
And the toll on time bad supplies

The counter hand for box entries
Offers services to the public
With absent mindedness
Testifying to the emptiness
A sorry state of our system

Dead sentence pronounced
On the National Postal service
Still struggling to survive
With middling personnel
In an age of electronic mails