Our darkness calmly wakes. Walking, it lifts
her blind-bright seascape dream away, its grey crane
cable spooling around her neck. It lives,
despite what kind of accident the coroner
might’ve called her belly full of perfume: every laugh
is still dry straw. I disrobe the Crown
Royal. I tap out qué será será on the leaf
of my Sunday crossword for her ghost in the corner.
As I watch a sill-pigeon peck and loft,
I remember clam beds, sandpipers, calm
ripples—not a still shadow in sight—where, left
with our shadow-selves, a lone whooping crane
high-steps the mangrove’s edge, stalking the live
link between dream-burst of sun and dark incarnate.