Wounded Mourning

We have a tray, a pot of coffee, and a muffin.
This is the moment,
When on thing pours itself into another:
Our backyard stored in shadows.
An autumn planet bending ice
Into an inevitable light.
Your childhood was years ago. There is
No trail back to it.
There is no certainty I will discover
The if or maybe that might remedy
An afternoon you mosied up a hill
After class. In winter, in tears.
The fire smolders into cinders.
Roses shiver in the February dark.
If love is a civilization,
As I’d once hoped
And you and I are its living citizens
And if words
Are less than rules and more like remedies
As we talk, maybe
Someone escapes from a wounded morning
In a classroom and finds
The world is not harsh, after all. Folded paper birds,
dance off the playground.
And when classes continue in the afternoon
The essay is easy. It is
“A Day in the Life of Sanchez.”
Afterwards, during coffee, the sweets have different names.