Upon the crags

How many times do I need to reduce you?

Close the lid on the stew, lower the temp and lock the door.

Wisteria bloom

and hang like alveolar sacs

along the drive

The gas rate exchange

Diffusion goes up

Black fjords shield:

I look for them

As reminders of you

That crisp autumn day when you took

Me to the crags

and the winds came up

from the west

You used to be one of the only

who saw my inner mystery,

could break pieces of me, inspiring the Gestalt whole

Now, the only ones who think

I am tough and mysterious

Are the tulpas

Who share my dances on the deck

Under the moon

and the stars

to coyote and owl calls

I pine,

weaving threads of rumination

Around the messages

you leave unanswered.

At night,

Nested, dreaming of submarines in the deep

who long to surface

The day you came back—

a sweltering August afternoon—

You were old, bitter

Your nails bowed

Your eyes no longer seeing me—

If they ever did

Arriving home, I unlock the door, unlid the stew, turn up the heat.

How many times do I need to reduce you?

Even still, the flame broils high

My wooden spoon circles and toils—

The reduction will not emulsify

Spectral swirls spill over

This fetid pot—

mortared with memory and thought

Of you