When I Was Fire

I never mourned. I had to begin
and begin again, with hope,

before I could look back
at what I had done

and to whom. When I was fire
I felt my bull beneath me

in the chute. The sky was a wall
of stuck-shut windows.

I hadn’t thought in this century
it was possible to smell God—

but something in the soil
the very last time. It was there

when I let the bull bolt
from under, circle, and face me.

It was there where I bowed to him
burning.

- Sam Ross, from Company

Adaptation, Tel Aviv

I squeeze the aloe
flesh over my knees

as your cousin scolds me
for saying ocean

when we are by a sea.
To me this is casual—

isn’t it all the same water?—
to her it isn’t.

What I could call her
is colonist since

it takes one to know.
Later, I wake when evening

still stains viridian
above the pink

and lemon neighborhood
to the schhh

of your grandfather’s
slippers on the tile which I hear

as the first soft syllable
of the name

we share. Six years
now you and I don’t speak.

If I was not in love
there are secrets

a self keeps safe—
if I was you were right

to forget me.

- Sam Ross, from Company