Birds give their songs to crickets
as you go blue-black, waste deep,
hand bladed off the forehead.
As you cut caliginous light
I could be the fisherman
on the nearby dock watching you lunge
forward into cold water
your open hands like ladders to a heaven
your arms rounding out from their other.
Yesterday you told me
what you feel near water. Osmosis
a proximity to the dead
in the rapping waves or stillness, the lull and catch.
You said there was something about it all
which made sense.
You hope now I see myself in you, sprawling,
a well-rendered line cut into the
surface of this dark translucent body.
For the witnesses it is this way:
perpetual calling, failing to tire
in the liquid of dusk, a subtlety
as of ancient willows sweeping in the night.
