There is a little cemetery
at the village edge.
Most of the names
have been weathered away.
But the newest grave—
soft, raw, and dark—
has not yet learned
the expected stillness.
The earth has not settled.
And in the heavy quiet
of twilight,
it sometimes seems to breathe—
not deeply,
not urgently,
but as if remembering how.
A slow, patient
rise and fall,
keeping time
for a name
already carved
into its heart.
The buildings remind me of splayed fingers.
Evening seeps between them,
staining the asphalt, though much of it
still tries to rise — coral blushing peach,
cooling to lavender, then smoke,
a haloed dome above,
then nothing,
or the illusion of nothing:
our minds supplying
the celestial forms
we remember seeing at night.
And with night,
low-pressure sodium vapor
arrests the compound eye.
Wing scales blur
the distance between street and lamp,
straining toward what
will never turn back:
Apollo toward Daphne,
Sköll toward the sun,
Hati toward the moon —
hungry.
I imagine love to be
like a glitching theremin,
jittering capacitors,
undulant frequencies—
juking, jiving, birring.
Flitting through clover blossoms,
stealing nectar, offering honey
to the hives of the sun;
rosebuds gathered, borrowed,
never owned.
Something like the shape of caws
in velvet throats—
held briefly aloft
like a rusted locket,
a gold ring, a grub;
promises swallowed
then given back.
Their phlegm strewn askew,
picked clean like carrion
by vultures descending through spindrift
and trembling wind—
vows stripped to bone.
What rots dries out.
What dries out feeds the field.
Beneath the seeds,
time sharpens its claws
until finches and psalms
of lovers
begin singing again.
i want to be
able to say ‘ghost’ in
every language
even in
the forgotten ones
we no longer have
a record of
even
in the ones we
haven’t made yet
even
in silence
i recall
anticipating seeing
the most insignificant
little thing
disappearing forever
and from that I won’t
recover
The ocean
doesn’t smell salty at all
Fishing poles at the end
of the pier—
cat whiskers
I wonder how far out
the horizon line is
on the water
Such calm waves
as if they’re running out of
what makes them
The museum is there
to support the shop
The sound of any particular raindrop
is beyond your ability
You can’t pick one out
from the sound of rain
You are on one side of a limit
and aware of
the other side
