The Brooklyn Rail

2023
for Andrew

All
the time stamps line the road
from main to main
purling from the shore   that’s
coiled with return

The for sale sign
stands in the pixelated shadow
of knotty oaks that sit
left
of the foreclosed avenue

Language is simple
in a stream but then
when it is
it can mean anything
on its journey     to you.

Two hands in the two
pockets of a wool jacket
getting home there’s the warmth
collected
the daisies standing in water
the books partially read and laid
on the desk and low tables, their spines taut

What’s a house if not
what is pointed out
what is written into the slant
of a street that only we know
has faced the bay for a century

What is a space of human dwelling if not
something that awaits our gentle remark
Did you know this tiny archway
was restored from a time

The purple glass squares in the ground were once skylights
Professor Lisa says “Can you believe it?
These opaque things now
like bits of amethyst. We step on them.”

I drive from Gilroy into the sun which is a place
that throws against the Sierras an alien glow
I tell my sister I want to be a wisp, a mote and she says no

The sun isn’t moving not in the way we think
but we summon it above and beneath us
like someone who plays wizard with the automatic doors at Safeway

Asleep in the greatroom
forget what water is and then
dream about water

Thumbing grief-stricken information hums
a clair de lune above a smaller, treacherous hard glow

like a field of return
like a daisy in a rifle
like a witnessing sky

All that’s
the paper
of memory and

Lightning over a lake  is longer in time than me
some object in some store   is longer in time than me even I am longer in time than me and

left
with thoughts that journey
like a bande à part
to you.