We walk down through the choking weed &
sprawling thorns to touch
a throbbing space, between
            patches of air, shell
            of sand
            sloshing within
            the damp circumferences
of the midden. I can approach it, feel
the air, touch it like it’s built of strings:
& this the anticipation & contorted
destiny. I know you called from the
            bus. Come
            back through
            my reckless
            description of that
space—lips pressed to totemic
glass so there’s        nothing truly
sacred about it. We do not
want to admit, rolled over under the plastic
            umbrella
            to unfurl the terse
            languages of care. The
            regret down our
            faces like
            language, like
            silver—but nothing
carries the secret, fragile tenses of speech. Or
I am beholden to our climactic argument?
The embrace is a kind, of leaning up
the warming hills & suddenly I
know fires emit no auroral glow. No
            but the pin-prick
            neon wink of
            their alignment.
            It was years;
            I felt a presence;
            restlessness,
closure. Under the
surface the glared teeth of salvation, some thunder
slamming at the glass. Your
protector told me, quivering in the flawed
shame of it—since he knew
            no real care himself,
            that the magnets
            could plummet—
            & the sky could
            nearly excoriate me
            with crumpled legitimacy.
            I swallow . . .
            on into the actual fatherliness
of it, but every           Return past totems
fills me with a power I couldn’t name . . .
I have known no equal to the communicative
fluency. Truant, with blunted
happiness, I cross back
            & forth the border
            specifically for you. For
            you to manage the plastic
            soliloquy I never
            relent, or
            extinguish the candle-
            bracelet encircling my belated
            & suffocating patrimony.
            Can you press
            me, gleaming to the wall
            once, again something
            extraordinary
            about riverbeds—like holding
happiness to a steaming oak? The safest place
to talk was the very middle of a spreading field:
or the flaking, spidery rubble of a tree—fitful with green.
We learned of the rapidly doubling
            well clusters &
            made arrangements. It was probably
            around a year.
            I’m . . . chattering,
            through my teeth a
            bit, of
            fear. I look
            back on this
            period through
            tinkling greys, how
            can I enliven the
teeth-grinding lunge for you . . . ? How
escape the smooth colors of us, &
rough selective patterns which are the
only common denominator of any memory.
            The car
            swings down  
            like a wraith through the fog, my own
            energy urging some slow
            expectancy. We live
            on, in the park
            & the sky is breaking
            into purple; the glass
            reaches forty
            feet & reeks of           
            disused necromancy. History
            & milk—running bloody, offal
in the gutters. The mist drifts . . . lifting
inches on the grass. Stillness . . . Every
utterance ratchets past crumpled water; we skated
            stones over it this actual
            November. So, again I know
            we are on the western hill & slowly
            descending in a long swerve
            of dew. This
            was every
            enigma we ever
shared. The slosh, of leaves. Yellow
wonder of our ankles, we reach them: the clean
sands of the midden. & grin—attempt finally to kneel: