1/27/2008

Exhaling

Tongue like fire, throat lined
with kindling to drive the flame
down to the furnace. Ash-winged
the soul flies up and out
remembering nothing.

Is this what you wanted-
to forget the trauma
of leaving?

Still warm in its vein, blood
struggles to remember, to move,
to resist the coolness which spreads
so quickly from the smoldering bricks

like steam of everything life
breathed in, burnt up

and exhaled.