Capella by Carl Phillips

Capella

I

I miss the sea.

I miss the storms

that stopped there.

How much is luck, again opening,

and luck shutting itself down, what we

never expected, or only sort of did,

or should have?

The windfalls of my mistakes sweetly rot beneath me.

Two hawks lift—headed north—from my highest bough.

II

So he’s seen the blizzard that the future

looks like, and gotten lost,

a little. All the same—

he gathers the honeysuckle in his arms,

as for a lover. Cloud of bees,

of yellow.

His chest, blurring bright with it.

Who’s to say brutality’s what he’ll be wearing,

when he goes?

III

There’s a light that estrangement,

more often than not, briefly

leaves behind it.

                             Then the dark—blue and damned,

erotic: here, where—done at last

with flashing like

power itself at first, then what power

comes to—the field

lays down its winded swords. —My head;

beside yours.