headlight tree

do what the seance tells you.
i put on my personal protective wear
to walk to the park. everyone 
is oxygen again. breathing like fish nets.
i have never kissed another diver
but maybe i will tonight.
instead, i have shucked my face open
like a clam. tell me how the water
reaches god & comes back down again.
a hatchet grows a personality & gets
it's own reality show. then it runs
for president. i convince myself
we are trying to heal. what do you do
when the wound is a part of who you are?
a fabric of the self. every stitch
an urgency to try & stay together.
tell me, bone, do you remember
how we used to dance in the iris 
of the sun? do you remember how
the voles used to try & eat the horizon.
we shooed them away.
the headlight tree is always car horn.
always burned skin or at least
singed hair. it does not remember
what fruit it used to bear. now it just
holds hellishly bright light.
more grow each dark. a vision before
turning into a roadkill saint. 
you can pluck them though.
you can hold the scream until
it turns to hair. take a bite of 
the halo. it tastes like butter cream icing.
then, an after taste of blood.
metallic. a ghost knife passing
over the tongue. you cannot keep
the world safe. you cannot even 
keep yourself safe. we can gather though. we can
ask one another, "what do you remember?"
split the headlights in search of 
the old shadows. when they are found,
care for them like nestlings. kin. 
contrary to what poetry has said,
hope is not the thing with feathers.
the thing with feathers is us. hope
is somewhere else & this is too urgent
to worry about what hope is & isn't.