Those feet, those shadows, that stand of angels shredded in the back bay, rat-straight lines and low dawn skies, toes broken, chafing and ashy in quick camps and waves, the catfish, the sails, the scraped signs our nights regress into, wind-locked, sun-betrothed, sacred as steel.
Move and years depend.
Mothers, aunts wander beaches with knives, heels skim concrete street pieces, rusting iron visions half-immersed. Honky-tonk Enthusiasts up from worship services with banjos, several layers of dirt, supplicate for soup, a tune and grace, amazing as they gather family photographs, and those unattended crab nets aren’t everything uncertain.
I think the shark’s psalm, murky dog woods listening for spirits, water-born from ecstatic loners, oil puddles and crows and half-sunken skiffs from Mobile Bay, cuddle and lift at the moment in, the calm out, I think, the rest of faithlessness, the clear sky, soothed asleep on the land’s stand, I think, coddles, comforts, the sea-floor’s Lupercalia, the orange naps of midnight.
Bitter cider vinegar of living take my means of breaking, steal my silence, my sugar, my still. Minute birth from other worlds cover my feet with lotions of your cast-off bodies, forget me with your families, plunge me into your lightning discord. Moon, water, body deliver me into those accoutrements of morning light.
