The linkages (bare-wired) gone watt & red hot, 
sun-stamped earth, wait for me my seamstress 
of the double hemisphere, ruby-clawed hopeful bird. 
Berry-ginner of the lower Guadalupe, when in flight 
you danced my twin dreams of you: cross-current dandelion 
freed of concentration / unbidden wind-driven dart. 
Wick-feathered foundling dropped-down smoothed-over 
thing, light chasing from your movement, announcing 
your arrival in broad colors. The stars reconciled & remitted: 
there should have been no world not blue for you, warmed 
about your dew-dipped belly, my caramel & yellow dappled 
Pekinese of the Pouty Lip, but beakwise—the whole 
stage gone sour beneath: the proliferation of garbage piles, 
the railway intercoastal and toxic sludge puddles. If I 
found the right words (redressed?) I could keep you 
safe in language, syllable bound & yes, language a trap 
in itself, validation through speculation, not much braver 
than silence, but hopeful. Man’s unmatched missions of mutability 
unwound your wristwatch, warbler, left pocket-fobbed 
& forgotten. It’s hard to convince the living the value of 
the near-dead not dying when death confirms their living; 
no chain of being but a coat which fits us all just once. 
The linkages burn & burn—a white needle thinning 
through thinning fabric like a javelin unraveling air. 
The great coat tightens like a lozenge in the throat.