& the pleasure of watching ripples divide only

to summon strength  to reform a broken color

bones still soft  hair slickly parted

what they do

a whole language

lost

the way wind strips away chatter & chaff.

These little mounds also collapse

& rebuild— silt  gravel  vast uncollected stuff

a cycle of nouns 1 billion of them listen

even without agency a noise as they slump

dragged into the streambed  embedded

one child with wispy hair insisting

on pyramids

scrapes & sludge on her knees

indifferently marred while afternoon too collapses

crepuscular  a train passing by piercing holes in the blue

but what is un-solid cannot be   broken down.

Do you know something about human footprints

tracker of time warps who once nosed a creek

unlikely in dimension after rain

who fish-hooked into shallows with a strand of hair & bent pin

watching it wrap around a twig.  A paper nest, a glass pipette.

When you returned   with sunlight’s proof

such delicate emptiness.