The Poem Speaks to Danger

Beautiful things fill every vacancy.
—C.D. Wright

I am a buzzard sky, late
fall, the smell of kerosene.

The flicker of a deer’s white
tail in the tree bones.

I am grass rustling.
In the lake, you are a fist

around a ponytail, the hum
of nearly stopped breathing.

A plane wrinkling a sheet
of night air. The belief

that everything ripe,
everything that will ever

ripen, has been picked.
Impossible. I am the mouth

that can hold more. I am
the moon watching the girls

swim, the night sky pucker
in the jet’s pull. Softening,

flushed, I am a cheek.
Peachskin. The globe

of some new, ready fruit.