I left you on the coast

with dirt beneath

your feet

not walking backwards but forward looking

back over your shoulder

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx the shoreline

receding having zero resemblances

I was waking or leaving

We had not burned the pine-board

raft xxx the raft was your injunction

to save the possibility

of a ceremony to come

I left you standing on the shore of the beach

with my blind dog who knows

the sound of water

in obstinate heat

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx done over

so that pattern makes passage

of surface

sunstruck xxx or caustic image

our reflection does not restore us

“From here every direction is shown” we read

the starmap in reverse upon water

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx upside down W

a letter in the sky made legible

Be cautious of arrows they are one-half

bad omens

xxxxxxxxxxxx one-half unspoken

language’s false currency

the lingua franca xx these “counterfeit angels”

We’ve traded on depletion for centuries

Thieves of some other voice xx these ledgers of errancy

Star of pitch & salt & spray an end

in resemblance w/ revenance

The city of ballasts xx a belltower

raised from the highest mast

I left tokens at your feet,

in torchlight in profile

to make manifest this aberrant narrative

Some other resonance that a word formed

as falling air x as sand x as stone

thrown down the empty space of vibrancy

tunneled and

toned without end within earth

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Unmoved

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx you attempt

to hold the equivalent width of worship open

The signal flares xx How we knew when to harbor

glare swallows your voice

now I navigate a gaping mouth

the throat we put a candle

back there hung from a collar of bronze

voice of no sound confounding shadows

hermit’s grayglint eyes

crown of ( )horns / hoofbeats and haloes

“(now after always a light)”

This as we know is a most honorable sentence

after the gods were all killed & the poets

renamed you love