An Obsession Over Ends

My body belongs to me like the earth
belongs to the miners.  I must taste of iron—
love is more than dissolution.  In Wisconsin
we watched leaves rotting off the trees and
wrapped driftwood roots around our wrists

to bind us together when nothing else would
hold water in the lake.  All my pieces are breaking
into you:  ore to tongue, ground by teeth,
still no breakdown.  If I am to dissolve

away from your mouth, I want to drift into wind
in red September.  This forest twists
around itself, exposed to the both of us—
leaves releasing themselves from branches
tangling naked to pickaxes and hammers.

I know what happens in winter:  We go to ground
to rot.  Maybe we are taken up in roots,
held in each other’s casing.  Maybe we drift
through the soil, press into peat.