Stretch

15 brown Victorian vases
lined up one afternoon
years before we met.
You asked for a motive
and I said,
causality is irrelevant
in poetry, I make
nations out of
hopeful green stuff
tire irons wait
their turn a catastrophe
E.D.'s quick calamity
a photograph of the aftermath
teaches me one way off the wall
you look at the same picture
and see my breath in roses
a wound watch a word
written is not the same word spoken
there are mines everywhere
we have to be careful but we aren't
sure why.

This isn't over.