And another me
Rises to the riverbed.
In this next chapter,
I will remind you of the water,
Of my many ghosts beneath it,
My hands running over your light,
Your face changing under my shadows
If you had stopped me last year,
Our lives might still rock, like boats,
Side by side in a wash of moonlight
In stride, you carry: worn pieces of paper,
A bird’s nest, a ruined Christmas
That sunken space below your shoulders,
The place where wings should be.
I’ve always loved the hidden marks
In old cutlery and in
The silent, stoic bones of your face,
Waiting to be touched
Or to be hit:
Both just different paths to the same place
Of yearning
For more flesh on flesh,
An understanding that words, at last,
Have lost their passions.
You follow the sun with your eyes
Cast it down to the lake,
A golden burn on your lips
An element of drowning, to be preserved
In the nature of these things.
At the end of my longest day,
The thrust of guilt,
A river buried in snow
The grey of hair and teeth
Shoes too small
That can’t, in their abandonment,
Recall that a footstep
Is like a breath
A blonde eye charts the seasons,
Pins winter to the sky
With broken backs
And rising smoke stacks
A shriveled iris in the ground
The train weeps on its wheels
Mouths filled
With layers of earth,
Dead crops dance in a dream
Like people
There is no you or I
There is no sun
Only the land,
A snow-covered field
Where last year’s plows are
Barely visible.