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.