Skeleton Key

You can always trade your
carbon silhouette
for a sledgehammer of ancestral gulls
that is if your finger fits the pulse.
Not even pretending to know what that means
but swept away by altitude & lust
w/bundles of glass hyacinths
looking at last the very substance of
neglect.   You remained for me the
color of Sunday afternoon.   The light
stumbling like a tear.   The delicacy of remorse
pending comprehension.
It was Tuesday by then & gulls obscured your knees.
As often denied as not.   The landing below a
wall of Mexican beer where I kept an
ardent crucifix sometimes mistaken for a surfboard.
Across the street there were three palm trees
parked in the body shop.   One day, you said,
we will set them free.