RECOLLECTED


Don't try to remember.
As it turns out

in denim and bloodstream
suede as buckskin I was -- only

sunray, snapped twigs and scar, one
stone and a stream warriors
get to to weep, a journeys

end and who you'd want waiting
with a way through tall grass, a
blog trailing cabin smoke out line

by vanishing line, its

chimney whispering dreams
it woke to at daylight
in the new air of morning.

I was what sighed

heavily whenever you wondered
mountain trail, pined in a warm
glade, met metallic thunks of the

shallows at the bottom of the boat, fuel on water making
rainbows at the surface of a soul,

what swam deep as though sent, threading

lines beneath placemat pads of lily, flys
sly green landings in the sun, what had
a notion of a sunfish with boy-gills, who knew the way

of mermaids, tackle at the fingertips, burning
to tan and given how to sit still the million years it took to get out
on the water, far enough, they could not call us back.