GOD IS THE FISH IN MY MOUTH

to John

Let me feel your sun warm my throat, 

illuminating me from inside. 

What spills from crows’ beaks 

but seeds and trinkets—

earring, dry fly, fishing line— 

they slide through watery mouths.  

Do I walk away, heart tight as a walnut? 

Or towards, which is really the same direction 

the swallows eddy and the cormorant rises, 

wet with a rainbow in his mouth?

—originally published in Verse Virtual, 2021