may may may may may // pamplona // eavesdropping // charles river // humid day // cool night

It’s no longer April.
Smoke hits my throat hot as a pulse.
I sit by the river and the skeeters
tremble in the sand,
their minute mouths shudder, an ugly
chord. All weekend my friends bent over pianos,
prostrate towards Schubert and Brahms
while the short lives in these grasses expire in my arms.
A hot spring blooms into tremendous
being. All the boughs spire up with blossoms
towards the coming months, leaden with apples.
Music from passing cars
dies like the heartbeats of bees
while trash skirts the riverbank
and the wind leafs through the trees
briefly, as through a cheap book.
Everywhere tiny things drown
in the beginnings of dew,
dark wings guide themselves by sound
through crowns and spires,
severally the trees open and close their hands,
aroused and still,
not knowing any
of their many names.