Now that the sky is homeless

 
Now that the sky is homeless
you make your own season
and each morning for just a minute

the snow is not mentioned
–even in summer you set aside
one window for tracks, covered over

and the wind hiding in bells
–you use this makeshift silence
the way a rifle is still aimed

with a deep breath and hold
–it’s not for long, your season
sets up and from its rivers

a blackness flowing, gathering
first as a rain that is not the sky
–it’s new for you, a sister-season

open and bleeding :a minute
rescued from the others
and at each funeral it shows up

ready to party, still young
though you cry out loud for a mouth
for the air that will not come.

What more proof do you need! jagged

What more proof do you need! jagged
left behind –a beautiful stone
torn to pieces and near its heart

a tiny rock half drift, half moonlight
that blossomed to become the opposite shore
–all these years in the open

though every wave still smells from stone
the way this sea from its start
was never sure, even now a doubt

splashing as your blood or throat
or better yet next time at breakfast
reach out with just your breath

and god-like touch the boiling tea
hold up the evidence, the first wave
and the emptiness it counted on.

 

***

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013).  For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at http://www.simonperchik.com.