Bramble

[crows]

Can I?
Read the searing word out of your head
Plucked as if, as easily, from
The pages of a book... held
In lives lead in neat, parallel safety.

Before, we were crossed
Wires, the accidental connection
The break, in a telephone line
That shatters out a few words
Breaking open the heat of
Someone else's secret;
Peaking into the interior of the Earth.

Is it like this because:
There are things in this world,
You cannot un-know?
A print made on my mind's dark eye.
Burn a gaze on my retinas.
Ghost shape of the voice,
Retreating laughter,
Sympathy-ache:
My throat closes, too,
Around a tangled wish.

My heart is a bramble,
Wild as sunlit summer,
As dappled black with shadow.