Give Me Death

give me tomb and graveyard.
give me summer’s dead.
give me leaves like sloughed dragon’s skin
collected to build winter’s nest.
give this skin a rest
from groping hands,
salt, and stove.
give me gold before it’s stripped
and shimmered, wrapped pretty
‘round butterscotch neck.
give me earth’s harvests,
dirt fresh from amniotic sac.
give me skeletal woods scraped dry of guts.
give me guts.
give me haunting call of wolf and loon.
give me november dawns
when sun glows silver like moon
and bare trees crack
peached sky like devil’s black-blood veins.
give me fingertips like december.
give me cold snap
and burning wood,
fire to flicker shadow over hearth.
give me seasons’ reminders
that life is fleeting, summer ephemeral
but returning, and dying
is just a transition,
a metamorphosis into something new.
give me the cleansing of snow
to soothe these singed limbs.
give me a gust of wind
to sweep this skin of freckles.
spread like ash, sow like seed
so that i may s t r e t c h
out into my widest bloom.
go ahead: give me winter’s blue
and see what kind of spring
i make of it.