When I Was Gone to Summer

When I was gone to summer green as paint, they came
and ground the vines to tangled piles.
A luna moth clung to the basement wall.

When leaves turned red as windows in my chest, they left
a bare tree, a tongue dulled
without a bell.

Where my eyes are shaped to the sea’s shape, nerves took root
and wove into my hand.
A door grows glossy as blood in the last light,

clapboards creamy in the gloaming
where I had gone; the summer came, as green as paint,
and my hand turned incarnadine.

When I pinch a bit of dust
and so compress expired stars, let
the weight of a bird be the volume of my thought.

Copyright © 2006 Theodore Worozbyt All rights reserved
from The American Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission