Dry hot wind
picks up sparks, bright against the night
A warm trickle down a boy's wrist

(Low heat that pulses through the earth
In the crack between the worlds)

A cool dewy spring on the mountain
prickles the skin

(but that wrist still itches;
even willow can only bend so far)

Love is a thing of wet places
for one reformed of ashes

like mud on the shore of an icy river.