kiss

                                                                     kiss

for years after, for the rest of his life, he’d lay his face on breathing things, any warm

or cold breathing thing, he’d believe: he’d stare and it would rise, and

he’d scour the mouth, the nose, he could see it he’d vow he’d see it: the coil and recoil

of clouds, it was as though the sum total of the cause of the lake that day his brother

went under went into him and he kept biting breath, or swilling it depending, as if it when it was frozen it was coke in a cup, and if he tried to look through it would be

suspended stars suspended in mid-pop

and when the thirst of it was desert razed, and there, mid way, a mirage: a Moses-struck stone where air poured out of instead water, air sweet air, taking and giving air.   

                                                            The summer after he’d put his ear over the mouth of one boy

and two girls as a game, the way he’d seen the minister or the Coast Guardsman put their ear

over the girls and boys all laid out in a line, listening, how the men suspended their ears over little

lips begging….

and one by one they wouldn’t give, no matter how hard they were struck or rubbed.  The pulled blanket or coat or linen scarf over the face still

wouldn’t

rise