Lynne’s Car Washed Violently Down, Off the Cliff

I turn the standing upright penny, its copper head cold, turn

and turn till a small whorl-well of a circle bores into the center

of the brick laid in our fireplace. Brick dust cradle. Thumb place.

This fireplace is wingless and cold. The penny multiplies in swarms.

Nine cloud coffins full of pennies are open and floating as bees float,

looking for my ears. Lynne’s car washed violently down off

the cliff. I am too young to drive. Today, all memory ruins

downstream to the bee-swarm, becomes a plea from then till

now and grows reason’s garden pulled out at the roots.

to the waist of the coastline, water-skin flexing. I am standing

upright: absent-me in a house full of grief and thievery. Above

the thumb place. I was a child there once, both boy and girl, standing

upright. I turned the penny over on the desert brick, in the fire,

stepped into the cold downstream ruin of  bees swarming

in the hard rain’s garden. I did not know what I was doing.

It was all made of the same shape and sound down there.