incendiary musings

Before I Begin                                                                                    







To start again in the candelabra
of branches, that is, always to begin

Waking, to feel the fur of trees
bending toward the calendar,

tomorrow. Our children are filthy
and we salute as we pass the evidence

of today’s kitchen, happy
in our failures, awkwardly worrying

a key passage of Bach to death.
That chord of geese keeps thrumming

overhead, beating a runway to water.
We have not been kind

to our muscles, grouchy, anxious
to be touched another way.

We baked half a day on the unforgiven
beach. It’s not smart to peel

your chest; it’s too soon.
You swell in the night, banked

in hot folds, the sprawled children.
I’m itching to take off your skin

and touch you to see which I want more,
to be burned or to be the burning.




                               Mark Conway












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