The rejection letter, an old piece of chewed meat, read, we never accept poems about dogs … never

Standing in the shadow of the peak, looking upward, I thought to myself, they must also mean no children with ripped skin, or butterflies on my head, or frozen breath at the edge of night

No insights into the twisting earth as the hot white hands of solar explosions drive us away, down into deeper holes

No running over ghosts in the old church graveyard, the ruin across the street, no far away sex in the dawn light like neither one of us is there

Yet, last night the rain storm came and we built a fire, the dog and I, our flames 7,500 feet high

Missa Him lay her head in my lap and her chest was rapid, struggling against the air, and as is my wont, I thought about death…