The More Moon, the Less Strewn Years:
I Am Ended by Harsh and Grass

Turnstones and plovers
  In the sand,

Puffbirds and pygmy
  Owls beneath

A kiss of sky,
  Baskets of copal

And colored feathers
  In a cage of hands.

I would be the more moon,
  A less strewn year.

Dust and wound-white birds,
  I am ended by harsh

And grass in a stain of air.
  One day, in the thighing hour,

The coral vine will find
  Its yellow-round embrace,

Its branching sepulchre
  Where the coastline

Edges the furrowed waves
  And silence weaves

The fullness of the hour
  A moving rainbow

Of sighted birds . . .
  Frigate birds

And honey bears,
  Our suns in mist

Only, a bleeding
  Him in the sleeve and

Wrinkled shawls of flesh,
  Nighttime is the waters

Of the sparrow,
  A wind receding

Into its birth,
  In a mud of sky.

Upon the darkening
  Shore, in the end,

Look downward,
  Look downward,

As the waves
  Unwave

Over the shallowest
  Cries of weather.

Copyright © 2002, 2003 Juan Carlos Vargas All rights reserved
from Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission