EPISTOLARY FACEBOOK MESSAGE NUMBER THREE

EPISTOLARY FACEBOOK MESSAGE NUMBER THREE

No pennies on my eyes this morning. But I slept with these

on my eyelids like bells, like moons, like kisses on the forehead of a bruise,

as I fell through a mist of pharmaceuticals in a cloud of unknowing,

weightless with both my children in my arms like shepherd moons

and tumours. Two poems, two hills, two tombs, listening

to the anapestic trill of my mindstream hair braiding its way

through the woods. And the silence and the silence and the silence

that scans. When I see a skull there’s always a flower in it

and a star that wants to start a constellation in my eyes.

Shaking like an aspen in the rags of its last leaves in a frosty wind

hoping this chassis of a body can live up to its engine. Time

to look under my tongue. So I can tell the morning

how grateful I am to be so warm inside here with everyone

like a cat or a bird or man in the pewter lustre

of another morning on earth. Where did all the flowers

come from? I swear, Gus, I love the way the things of the world

are always getting out of hand. And the silence, and the silence

and the silence that scans.

You can’t imagine how much love there is in my heart

for you right now. All of you, though I’ve known many of you

since I was an upstart. New friends in the schoolyard, all of you.

I’m going to see what my mother packed for lunch.

Love, Patrick