In the woods the glottis trembled
red over rock, the strange markings
singular & secret, bees
would not catch them.
You were their echo, fingers tapped
for each quivered sound
& not believing this
your navigation. None of it,
scratched in playground sand,
below the trees’ bloom on cold avenues.
At night, the moon
was a blind fraction, stars
as smoke plumes
& vowels as decades & I was never
a savant but saw you late
in the strata of language.
Where snow cut its milk teeth,
your face the smallest phoneme.
Where the epoch of light & air
& bees all diminish, your pencil
writes a little wing on the d
& the b twists to kiss its mate,
they wave where
we wait in the passage of reading.
Rachel Moritz is the author of Sweet Velocity (Lost Roads Press, 2017) and Borrowed Wave (Kore Press, 2015), as well as five chapbooks of poetry. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.