In the daylight
far from where people were
she pulls a feather from the sand
brushes it clean.
The same way she did as a child,
collecting feathers —
the way a clump of dust
collects more dust
by static electricity.
Rushing home at the end of each day
to spread them wide across the kitchen table
and listen to their incantations
writhing in the air.

A damp matchbook rests on top of the sand.
She flips it open without looking,
runs her thumb down the cardboard,
and finds one match still intact.
She stares ahead,
wonders if the texture on her fingertip will flake it apart,
leave her hands smelling
and feeling
like fire for the rest of the night,
or if the cold ocean water has already
washed away that part of the match —
the part that smells
and feels like
fire.

A photograph,
washed up on the same beach,
is too faded to interpret.
Two blurred forms stand very
very close in the foreground.
The background is dim,
but not dark.
Maybe it's evening.
It's not night.
Or it might be night,
but in a well-lit place,
like a city or a gas station.
I suppose it matters little
as it’s still a beautiful photograph.

Beautiful like the way
a quiet walk with the dog
is only broken by the occasional mumble
or hum.
It doesn't matter
if you speak clearly.
The dog's only listening to your tone
and your hand behind it’s ear,
and it’s memory of all your time together.
and thinking about how all people need
is enough to pretend
we're home.

Instead of slowly building a tonal
palette across months
years even
spend your minutes hours days
gathering the main threads and loose ends
of a life’s oeuvre
into a tapestry brilliantly feral
and unknowable.

Tack it by the roadside
where the asphalt leads back
to lost dreams so beautiful.
Where those you cherish most
are already looking back from a future
where nothing quite worked
but some unexpected air
still managed to find it’s way
into the digital chatter claustrophobia.

Learn not to worry
and hold close the absurd mystery
of your hands hands
never quite forgetting to
search for a familiar shape
in every darkened room
beyond the space set aside
for dreaming.


Never forget to repeat yourself endlessly,
endlessly
endlessly
endlessly
when the subject
is love.

Even as the photo fades
I would not forget
the brilliant seasons
where from your side
for a moment
there was but a single silhouette
for the three of us.

I’ve been running down
this snow covered road
For fourteen miles
with arrow heads
pierced through
the bridges of both feet.

Extremities turning blue to black
I can’t turn back now, face it.
Twelve inches overnight
they said,
We reap what we sew
they said.

A whisper ran beside me
Running off
the road - to the woods
I followed -
until our bootprints
reached the lake

Frozen almost to the center
I laid down. Made snow angels.
Looked up at old light
dancing behind the trees.


I hope the ice cracks reach me,
before the rest of them do.

Your name still hums,
shimmering
magenta bright forever
in a glorious world
of tourmaline
and glass.

I bring myself,
to your altar
open and ambiguous
focused softly with an underpainting
of dark teal blue.

Staggering in a self-conversation
neither entirely conscious
nor fully verbal.
For a moment
it quiets me just to be there.

Ears flatten
at the primal cries
howl across dark water.
For a moment his eyes peer beyond
the warmth of the doorway,
almost catching focus of
their sharply glowing eyes.

Hair flattening back,
he looks back to his well worn mattress
and steps sharply away from the night
wet muzzle still bristling
from the riverside smoke
and windswept oak.