I decided not to write you any more. But first, I left—for you to never

Read—a love poem or six, far from this one, in a train

Station in Paris. But first, in the flash of my last glance

Into your eyes I saw confession for a fuse reversed to

Burst before it burned and then it stretched—with you

Aglow aboard—to fill an unlit hole with its

Un-lighting, from a train station in Paris. But

First I woke from a different rain

Of shattered glass on shockwaves, stained

And scattered with the weeds

And me throughout a

Path that once

Had been

 

Connected

 

And called

Broadway—where you’d

Lived and where we’d

Met, down the drowning Mississippi

From the hilltop where we’d slept

In the Memphis sun until New Orleans

Thunder shook me home and from my slumber

Onto stone as it became warm echoes of your

Name. But first in the first days of fall I

Fell away from words and all was well, though even as

I ran I knew the backward bombs were you. But first they

Burst and when I turned they burned…                       warm and endless.