We stay with the day just another wave
sliding into the palm of sand so inclined
to hold what is offered even so briefly
as if time made a difference when
the difference has left us these lives
on the thin film between sky and earth
I’m good at earthquakes
you said and you at thunder
Waves crash—a murmur
in the moon’s ear—still asking
who is pulling whom
So some days the purple sky says “love you”
and just as I’m soaking it up I hear
the mountain say back “love you too”
The moon of how you feel
shines much closer than the stars
closer than memory lighting the space
between then and next
In the surf of the beach
I dream us on and by our feet
glowing creatures imitate the stars
without reflecting them or caring to
It’s okay to look and
it’s nothing to look away
not knowing where we are walking to
under a moon of rush and surge
and while at the edge in the glowing
foam the now can seem shallow
this wave has been traveling
towards us for a long time
Now it is time to cross those tracks.
Yet I cannot tell on which side
I hear your breathing.
When the lamp is out
a lone firely rises like the moon
In the pause between
here and there the crickets fall
silent with me as
if waiting for a
shadow to pass but it’s deep
night, all shadows of
shadows the quiet
big with all the unsung songs
clouds fly before some
thing larger, like shifting
words in a short poem
We came here to the summer
it is a place like life is a place
On time’s window we are open and still
everything you want to say
But every time you look we are different
if you want us to survive you must
Stop glowing so we can find
our own way to the one you love
Shadows on the sidewalk of leaves in motion
above me are like the shadows of flames
the leaves are burning but the burn is slower it is a burn
we can inhabit or control are the leaves our days
how can we see it in the leaves still green and flexible
how can we see the beginning and end of it all in the shadows
how does the time difference work is it the same
when I send out words to you here in my midsummer
why do I feel the entirety of me burning
Passing through the veil of rain at
mountain’s peak I see the west breaks off
The sun lets the day go quietly there farther
and the break remains as my car crouches
against the hour changing its eyes
the long slow throat of thunder growls
all evening through the hollows and the gutters
on the roof all July is like this and the break stays
with me this open space to the west what
time is it there what are they seeing there
when the moon waxing now low in the clouds
appears like an eye behind a veil is it the same moon
on the other side will they know as the veil
of rain is lifted from their faces I will not let
the groom doze off on them or see
what I see in the break I saw on the mountain
Translations from the English 