second august (i would that you were)

i would tell you about how summer feels
like you’d never felt it before
the vibrations of daytime locusts
making such a noise you understand
why john ate them (to shut 'em up)

the sick musk of hydrangeas
brown on the edges
dust loose, silk underfoot
air thick with rain that won’t

 if you were here i’d ask you to pray
because i am choking at my desk 
a tenor is singing bach but
he isn't deep enough to keep me afloat
i would tell you i sat for ten minutes
afraid to move in case something tore loose

grief possesses a corpus and
it doesn't want to die
so as it does it leaves a smell
from which you cannot hide

i gnawed the bones clean, now
they bake in the wasteland oven
they crunch
dry underfoot
when you try to leave at night

the carnival packing up takes its tremendous
temporary structures
puts it all on a truck and gets gone
if you go looking for it the next day
there is only trampled grass, a little popcorn underfoot

but if you drown the pain well
below the water line
underneath the drought
by the time you haul your guts up to your mouth
no one believes that it ever was

so, when it wells back up
and you are holding it in
buttoned
right
up
consider the health of your still-living bones
remember the others who have spilled and spent.