If I were a book of poetry —
So well loved,
So well thumbed-through —
I could drop a page at any time
Right into your lap.
And startled, you’d take it up
And my words would fill your dry eyes like tears.
And there’d be only the slightest hesitation
As decades fastened with crumbling glue gave way:
The sound of a single feather pulling loose,
The satisfaction of wood hammer on silk string,
A sliver sliding free
A sentence between your fingers,
Oiled thumbprint two-thirds up the page
A few words to hold your tongue,
Caught between teeth and barely moving lips
In absence or silence,
Pages unwritten, blank in my heart
Balaam's Ass 