Clouds and Trees


Category: Ghazal

Winter Ghazal

The cold sun steps out through the clouds
“I’m just a star, not a god, please forgive me”

The tree collapses back into itself
“I reached for the sky; the ground, forgive me”

The crow spits all its feathers back out
the only song it knows called “forgive me.”

I open the windows just to feel the cold’s mouth.
There are not enough blankets for you, forgive me.

The rain soaks; it can’t see from the sky
“This is the only way I can speak, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me


Witness Ghazal

Conceived in the wake of a watery grave
I cried out impossibly into silence

My hand are pressed against windowless glass
and it chills my diluvian skin into silence

The scene unfolds through the ceiling above
where my ears are pressed against a house cast into silence

I watch mountains collapse in projection on her back
the kind of escape you can only see as it settles, into silence

Sometimes I dream of her lying in a stream
sinking slowly, completely, into silence