Peter Boyle

Small things betray us. / The jaw that aches as the oxygen dwindles. / Deep and delicate this depression / as it walks across me into the other world.

You slipped out of the noisy corridor / into perpetual dawn / with the first birds stirring over the broken back fence / with footsteps moving over the frost

Their blessing is a wafer I will take and break in half – / the small mouths of the fish beginning slowly to open.