Sun guzzles quick down August’s throat.

The valley otherwise
charred, this glade is
old-growth miracle.

The big-voice flashers.
Wings of metal and night.

Peak gust and west of July.

He wanted no money,
had nothing to sell,
didn’t boast or brag or bitch,
except a little bit.

Let her renounce sight and be unseen. Let her
cough ground coral in the shedding of a pewter
moon, that she, of all the innocents, should live.

Nowhere to go back to—they say—but there is somewhere to go.