Forms of Love

Hunting Season

I see in your eyes the anticipation of iron,
the time when flowers are issued
visitation rights, when judges yawn
and stay your execution yet again
because they wish to see you weep
once more on the doormat of heaven.

You cry such tiny, rapid tears
like heads of pins cut off and falling,
like words squeezed from tubes
one by one tumbling to the floor
forming incoherent sentences of grief,
wild mutterings of song birds caged in lead.

Your eyes, which once were as blue
and wide as skies over spring meadows,
now cloud with chunks of gun shot,
squint with screams of doves ambushed
in erratic beatings of their domestic flight.
I cannot let you see me again.