The wind moves the trees like a pencil box
sways in the hand of a child as she waves
goodbye to her father – school bells and clocks
ring and tock, tick and toll, and his soul caves:
Why? He won't be seeing her no time soon –
That is what the law said, and I can't blame him
for driving to the ledge, walking on the moon,
howling, from the heart, a pretty strange hymn:
No, I can't hate on that, nor on the law,
the process that stranded him for being
loose-lipped, with teeth that erode like a saw
the morsels of decorum and meaning:
The trees bend over to offer branches
to moist air and quick wounds that time stanches.