Humboldt

I remember you
all across the rounded mountains
where the sun blazes soft in the grass
and shadows carpet the slopes

where the fog hangs heavy in the inlets
where the country breaks free
of the highway and fences
and the houses hang low against the sky

far from the temerity
and tangled stands of buildings
the sky scraped and bruised
the canyons and their jagged wash
of houses, the angled rivers
and all their gleaming refuse

where the sun dives clean into the water
instead of falling, flailing into the hills
where night comes without dying
and things pass into each other unbroken

I remember you are the light, flickering
out over the water
licking the waves and rocks, together
if I come some cold northern night
to the damp sand beneath your beam
what I trace--will you light it?
when the tide carries it into the dark

broken buildings

the weary memories

trudging in the shadows

rustle, under the leaves

--I skim an hour

as the breeze rests

lazy across the walk

water frozen in the cracks

spring rushing, in the gutters

ten thousand small tragedies

cracked off my jaw,

gravel of the mind

between the dark rise of the future

and the desire for things

that have slipped between my fingers

--I dream a better kind of want

so grim

I glare up into the fronds

eyes like an unclenching fist

to catch the starlight

this soul is weary of walking on rubble

of perching hunched

on the bare framework still standing

of hoarding pieces and ends

--I would if I could fall slowly

light beyond the shadows

not reflect coldly

on far-off skies and broken buildings