Meadow of matchsticks,
soon to be rekindled
by Spring the incendiary.
The exact flame of your blossoms
will ignite the passions
happily sapped by time–
Dripdrop their excess went
and now miners’ hats
light up like love before
your vein, the frame of which
is there to depict the drift,
the waste when I painted
all the review copies
they sent me. But those books
open to polar pages where you
and I weigh the ends of this
teeter totem down, you
at the head and nadir me;
where postmortem is
the aura of self-portrait,
its other half regained at last.
