If We Are Kind

If we are kind, what is spoken and what is also unsaid
is the thing we do not cross, the demarcation
we do not talk about, the intersection of when|how
and past|future (this does not illuminate now).

Here we are settled like houses,
with the architecture blown apart
rivers rifting through us, so many
possibilities (to buy or not to buy is not
the only question). We are landless thieves
looking for a ditch to nest in.
To say nothing of the plane, the angle,
whatever depths we find ourselves.

Though perhaps you were an empty vessel
you came to life — a tongue of flames fracturing
the sunlight in this lazy dish — then movement,
uptick, and the gradual swallow down

down to this inevitable fall. What is
hidden in the value of darkness. What
these blood tinged clouds might tell us
about nighttime. Where is there calm.
Where there is calm. Where a crumpled paper
skitters news along the railroad tracks, boxed
cargo whisking sacks from one county to the next,
from one state to the next –

We drift, colliding ever shapely into some sort. Do you catch
a fish, hung, lip to (whether sport or sustenance it’s hard
to say these days) and watch the heaving belly beneath
spotted skin, sun-slick and shining air like burning knives,

too much to speak, so much dissecting.
If we are kind and we believe
we present blunt trauma
as a reasonable end. The punch,
the hook and sinker, the half-cast look
that keeps us coming back.