Three Locusts

Weathered planks beneath bare feet, waterside.
Trees’ faces silhouetted
against 11:39-shaded purple-black. Chest
bare to the night, stand alone song:
Watch, spirits, prophets - watch.

They are nature’s impartial
grandfathers; threefold
sentinels, watching generations
pass their parade beneath a thousand blossom-white eyes.
Whisper, spirits, watchers - whisper.

In the air, chlorine moon,
I feel the sun’s burn slide off of my shoulder
beneath fingertips; mine? Yes,
whispers truth. Know ,
whisper the prophets.

I choose the locust truth,
swallowing real. I choose
to fall asleep in my room with no walls
and awaken in the dead-sun morning
healed.
Know ,
whisper the watchers: know better .

I know my father
will reprimand me if I am found out here
in the drowning night -
these spaces are no longer his, any more
than the reflection of a son in the pool
of his eyes is mine.

I know my arm
sare light with goosebumps; and feathers
are heavier when wet, but the water is as deep as the sky,
and a burgeoning something –
a wing? a scream? –
aches to burst from every pore.

I know the wind
has the vigor of a river and sorrow
enough to make the treetops speak –
syllable by syllable, leaves ripple a liquid
eardrum that hears only muffled distance. Palms like bark,
I make waves and envy it.
Know , whisper the prophets:
know better .
My hands are better suited for hammers
than hearts – see them? My feet have grown roots,
so I close one eye and reach
outward – am I touching now?

Know , whisper the watchers:
know better .
Is flying, then, the same as being sad –
in the sense that I am allowed to do neither?
There are feathers in the water, but they are not mine –
nothing waits in my skin, I think, but thorns.

Know , whisper the prophets:
know better.
They have watched my father,
too – proud, like his mother's mother. Like her,
he will pretend not to notice
things drowning.

My god is three half-dead tree
son my great-grandmother's former half-acre.
My hands are floating in a backyard pool. I smell chlorine
as they trace red, and white
tank-top lines to nestle under nervous armpits.
I shiver, and feel foolish.

W hisper, spirits, watchers – whisper.
In my room without walls, maybe I will hear you
muffled through the heavy glass window
with the rusted latch
above the brown paper of Johns Manville-brand fiberglass insulation.

W atch, spirits, prophets – watch.
See the boy who wrote poems in the dark
by the pool succumb
to Seroquel sleep, your voices
subsumed. To him,
it likely resembles being underwater.