Endless Brevity

For a month you have lain between us And I have been a boy against your back Searchlights slicing our blackout Above the factory where dad made munitions And now and then you would turn and hug So I heard your heart detonating and you Saying that we were polar bears and I Was your cub under the snowy sheets...

I make tea against your absence Night's ebb resolving as tree sway A bird quick as fish across the shallow lawn No trace of you in all this endless brevity.