I.
Dear B: tonight
is a cold cliff I lean over. Tonight is a fair
blank face. Think of the way light
lusters an edge of something, sharpens a stand
of poplars. Think of the way an animal faces the baying
hound, the night air
warming around the hound’s tongue, the rain spraying
surrender into the animal’s fur. Each year, the land
crushes new parts of itself into the water. It dreams of the sea’s roar,
of the sea’s mouth, of the fling
of itself down the sea’s throat. It dreams that each strand
of seagrass began in a dry meadow and wonders whether it can begin
there again if it closes its eyes. Dear B: I cannot bring
this night into focus. I cannot bring myself in.
II.
In a late August garden, summers ago,
I watched as a thrush brought
a snail down against a rock until its shell broke. The thrush’s song was a low
tremolo as it dismantled the snail’s softness and we—
me and my two eyes watching—thought
is this what it’s like to be a pebble in the mouth of the sea?
III.
Daybreak: the sky is faith-
white, is closed as a cockle shell from cloud-shore
to cloud-shore. The horizon is a furled
sound that loosens with light until, at noon, all I hear
is the glare, the waves’ roar
like a razor blade under my tongue until dusk, when the water’s breath
blurs even the whelk’s spires. Dear
B: I lied about the cliff. I am already falling through one world
IV.
and into the other. There is something halfway true
in this. There is no other world, but I have already fallen into it, and it seems
clearer. Between my dreams
of the panting hound, of the shell-less snail— a new
dream: light
on a meadow. Vast heat. A pain
white and soft as milk, and plain
as a blade of grass, as a bird’s flight
drawn against a cloudless night.