When You are but a Breath of Light

The Long and the Short of It

Even bored and listless beachside
we are building a custom heaven.
The man with a bum leg and metal
detector is picking up our vibrations.
When you peel the shell off the mystery egg
a villager discovers a weapon in his twin
shadow and thanks the double sun above.
A seed of truth in every superstition,
several other versions of you back there
in your undreamed sleep,
so much to forget to get back to
a primary vision.

Reading

Coming to the end of the book I slow down,
savor every word, every line. Did I rush through
parts before I pick up now with more concentration?
Is it possible to go through the entire way this alert? 

I don't think so. We're bound to drift from time to time.
I'm good but not good enough to shut out the wind,
the voices coming through the leaves, dogs barking,
memories sometimes I don't even recognize as my own.

What is all this, as if the world were laced with footnotes
and appendices, marginalia and underlinings,
camper vans parked along Beach Drive,
crowds you suddenly wake up in feeling a vague 

spatial disturbance of the gull flying right through you.
Wake up more invested in the scent of beach fires
and someone singing, string lights over the cantina,
a shadow self in the garden—all to say I'm pushing back,

as if finishing a book is burying a friend, last words then
blank pages, a period of drifting unconnected in the gap,
yet pick up and randomly read, I'll tell you book and writer,
holding onto the old world yet reaching for the next volume.

Flow

She's drunk and yelling, going off
to the basement to pass out among the paint cans.
Crows peck a hole in the morning rooftop,
drizzle sliding over the world.
It's like the ocean took one big inhale
and left the shores puckered and twitching
with naked rock and pier blocks.
I pull walls away and spider webs, the past
scattering like cockroaches exposed to the light

There's Always a Moon in America

Little by little or in a sudden shock,
a kid peeking through a doorway,
the moon over a field glowing dark white,
a blank page, a wolf coming in from the right.
I imagine the trail to the cabin by the river,
a brickmaking station, a porch, a chair facing West,
trap lines twitching, rabbits hanging in the shed,
the car and the grass on the hillside going nowhere. 

I go burnt pine to circling hawk, cloud to open sky,
big thunder coming this way, lightning full of ideas,
windows rattling from the pregnant wind,
tide of people, curio store on the side of the road
with pelts and wood carvings and old photographs,
travelers that look like they have holes in their eyes,
the river again there beyond the edge of the property
flowing in two directions at once, a mystery spot,
optical illusion as little by little we pull apart,
the way we go up and out of it in a sudden shock.

When You are but a Breath of Light

At the prow, the end of the earth,
your head in the blue grey mist,
I am witness to your name tag
fluttering on your coat,
when you faked a limp to catch a girl's eye,
stole the knife and climbed the rooftop,
moved through the night in various disguises,
here, here it is in this book, see,
always paper soft as a cloud,
another continent ahead,
family waiting for your arrival.