Pastoral by Joshua Caffrey


I
The leaves run from the wind. Whosoever shall breathe coal that their lungs should solder their lips shut. Soldiers still smoldering, and tender touches that break at will so sudden. That day birds learned to pass through windows as they couldn’t stand the wind in the wells — this is what the villagers refer to as the song of the angels — and, the knell sounded upon the rifle finding its mark. Only then the ocean lends itself and builds cathedrals beneath my skin. The apocryphal stories their stained glass windows tell. Where contrails bind the east eidolon hills recede. Set out under amber cupolas to find that infinity that fits best.

II
Of those whose bones turned to nothing after burnishing the marble for so long it sublimated back into fog — what remains attests to our solitude. And the crickets’ serrated wings perform their autopsy nightly — fans the hearth and consumes all that was left behind acoustical sails ad infinitum.