O, you about whom much is said,
but none for certain,

are you the glint of evening copper
that sets the river’s face aflame,
or the smoke-grey shadows that lengthen
across the backlit transept
of my father’s riddled lungs?

Is it your voice I hear in the blue
throat of the bunting,
or do you speak in tongues of fire
that turn crop fields to cinder?

Do you incense autumn
wind with the must of grapes
plucked from the vine,
or is your breath the roil of earth
and mud that flattens cities
when the levees finally crumble?

Do I taste you in the gold
of honeysuckle sipped
from the style, or in the tang
of venom sucked warm
from the wound?

Is it your finger that breezes
the plane of my chest
when I step into summer’s first
shirtless dusk,
or will the fury of your fists
one day pound my heart
to stillness?

O, you who may or may not be
all, or any, or none of the above,
I attend at this strange equator
that divides if from is,
I am from I am
not,
I seek from I have found.