The Oracle

The fog-gleam.
The fog the shape and the direction.
Direction comes with age. Is that
A new disease, or are you in love again,
With the proposition? Yes, I’m a tree again.
What it feels like is what it feels like
To breathe first. That is, like,
How to arrive, how to arrive, how to arrive.
When I last saw you, our eyes
Brushed with a glaze of cell phone light.
And where were our clothes?
They were hanging from the light-
House bath. I couldn’t believe our eyes,
But we looked for it, and we found it.
Then the proposition ended with
The water cold, then lukewarm, rag-
Clothes draped over my branches
Again. You swimming nude
Ashore. What we say flitted to us,
Slipped to my roots. You drew a heart
With your fingers like a pocketknife.
Then I die.

____
Hayden Church lives in Alabama.