The landscape prayed its litany
of dusk, grieved us, did not need us.

Daylight grew fat, grew slack with fatigue;
the pond scum thickened.

If you listened, the limestone sunk beneath
your tired feet told you

you were water before you were flesh,
and wind before that.

Your bones may leave a fine shape, like old fish,
like curved shells; we happen

the way light happens;
after the thunderstorms ride the sky,

day’s skin darkens.  Beneath it, a hawk
quiets.  Pink lizards skirt the window light

and the Luna Moth bangs like an amnesiac angel
against the screen.  Later sleep will weave

the wet through our ribs; we will grow wide,
slatted, unmoored, born by the tide-heave of dreaming,

o body, old boat of time and breath, no less, no less.

–First appeared in 32 poems
 and then in the anthology Old Flame