Dogwood Moan

I the end of summer always smells

like my own grave

and I swear there must be valerian root

laced in this heat. I am the calmest clam, I will give readings of these summer scars

like crop circles like my future while I still can

II you’ll find me by the lip of the lake, belly up,

softly spoiling; taste the sour ghost of tidepools like phantom limbs, lake sputtering through ports

of jellied flesh

I’m a bag of curds the colour of marigolds

liquefying on the bank

III here in the firs,

the sun bakes the wasps cherry pit pies. you smoke

something in the bathroom every hour, the dogwood

still moans

I have locked seafoam safe

in my cheeks as a new year rises

my mouth drawn as a sun-rot seed

to preserve trails of suckling in ice like amber when the earth seizes first frost.