SPOKES OF A SUMMER

Because Beethoven was her lover at eleven.

Because there was a couch on a pier and fire in the sky.

Because a twig at a time makes a nest.

Because artichokes gone wild are like anemones out of water.

Because the face of a cherub's like an alloy of the heart.

Because carillons make music by the ton.

Because H – E – R are the letters blazing in the pavement.

Because the dog becomes it leash.

Because the red of the colander makes the blueberries bluer and blacker.

Because bark is God’s syllabus.

Because sorbet on the tongue is like breasts in a painting.

Because the frontier is the dream’s preamble, bullet by bullet.

Because the sense of an ending is a fiction falling asleep.  

Because the spokes keep the summer still and moving.

Because pears can be beacons in the shade.

Because waking is a murder in the ears, crows falling from the wire.

Because Mojave sage makes a garden sacred.

Because chlorine’s the body’s perfume.

Because the black and yellow wings find solace among dead petals.

Because the hummingbird is the clicking we hear.

Because the pepper tree has the soul of a dove.