Between Gasps

In the grandness of edits I live
in gaps and shadows; between
footsteps I walk to feel land’s beat.
To find a place in this air, I breathe in
taste wild cherries, autumn apples, dance
drunk as a bird lost in the sweetness of ferment.

At night I lose count of my sins
in the blackness between stars; my dreams
scale fortresses to find me. I burrow for them
overturn every stone, grapple suns until my
hands are burnt, follow them down into
silvery gasps between gills of a grounded fish.

Sometimes, I hear stories in the silence
just before wind moves through the leaves,
and my heart trembles like a paper lantern
strung between the trees. The bones of a fish
rattle on the shore below as high in the hills
a sound of chimes can only be heard as longing.