Red rock green eyes reacted like coteries to a river delta,
Careening and laughing out with powerful winding lines
Blood vessels lost in the Everglades,
Or a Nine Dragon whisper; focus, foaming,
Breathing dust-gone blacks on a pupil moat

Trust me that the rain will dry
And everything that you see will cease becoming mud
Instead, fire will wet around the boats
Bells will fold bubbles, bronze, telling stories
Summer becoming summer when you blink, crushing fir trees into fossils

Crushing conifery into fossils— velvet
Velvet! Soaking the top of the sky,
And everything, and mountainbacks;
Your face tests a complex blue
Green answers back into floodwater hue

Red rock … blood along the tear duct, fell out
Something known— like a thought, or a revelation, creating
More of you than the eyes would ever break
Shorelines tossed along in their horrific distance
Great serpents gouging out the sun,

And I can no longer look at you
Red rock green eyes drenched, skipping across the collapse
Mimicking an umbrella bird, like puffs of smoke and clouds, and survival instinct
So hideous to me. I was in love with you
We saw bright colors together— bright feathers— and speaking cliffaces

Was my gaze so coveted that it keeps
Castles collapsed into their moats?
Tribes collapsing into the most basic of parts?
Forests without the meeting of roots?
A rainbow of rivers, diverged into soot?

Color without compassion— red rock glimpses into disaster
Bereaving and faster and faster the current collects
Green eyes lost in the ******,
Or the end of the world; always thinking
You couldn’t possibly leave a trace in the water