Paths form memory past memory, / time immemorial yet here material: a living tapestry draped / to the mantle from the sky. And through this organ, breathing: // a cut, a slice, a wound. Severing the spawning streams, the falcon’s / fields and beaver ponds—even the cliffs—a highway drives / into the woods.

A puddled reflection cleaves / the largest robin I’ve ever seen. Cleaves, / or doubles. Doubles, or deifies. A worship / of muddy knees. Hinging / in any direction.

So nose to the ground, you piggy reporters / to snuff out stories like truffles, gobbling / the T from your “LGB” in Stonewall and Civil Rights / biographies. Mutiny your motley crew. Betray / Jill Hawkins, though she was like a son to you.

I think “Maybe I should give Them a call.” / We were close once, me and God—childhood / best friends. And, as those do, when we grew up, / we grew away.

When you do not like what your eyes see…scoop them out with a spoon.

brief / encounters make us exist always / as echoes, as one whole ocean in a bucket / in the memory of a stranger

I drift free from my knot of veins, woven / like kelp, to the surface where I touch the empty sky for the first time / since we met (when your grey eyes submerged me like a prophecy…