Legerdemain

Tricks are for fools like me.
Her empty hand is a cloud

over a mountain range;
I am the undercut rock

where no rain can fall.
Yet here we are. Water.

Stone. Left to the damage
each can bring, her nude

body a hailstorm breaking
the granite of the want bone,

wrenching a cry only dogs
can hear. From the throat

of the Fool comes ill-kept
hail-forged wisdom: it says

Leave. Leave now. Don't
look back at the damage.

She drowses, she believes my
missing body is a trick of the light

coming from the cracked window
after the pelting of ice and rain.

—Rusty Barnes