Jon Frankel

THAT
by Jon Frankel

I did love you once
and every leaf
shook with your breath.

Between us lay
delicious heresy,
a bed of incest.

We two entwined
broke over continents
inside a wave of fire.

Burnt clear away,
the world was gone
and the wave was spent.

It was that fall
that made me man;
a slow penitence.

Now it does not shadow;
every leaf is free
of your breath.

The open breezes
of autumn shake
gold to the ground.

And in certain tides
the streetlights fray
into flowers and coronas.

-Jon Frankel
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