Longlands

it's again nighttime

at the bottom of the island

white sands lament the wind

which carries the lonely song

your memory effervesces and we're drifting

inexorably towards the white rock

In a rush of April's generously smooth river

snatching up baby turtles with our oars

from the clairvoyant blackness

setting them carefully on the bow

& it's here

that i'll never have to know you died cold

and alone atop the hospital roof

mother singing to you in a half-sleep

tears raining over the eventual dial tone

if I could just remember everything

I'll never have to know its magma

it all was an unlived universe

I know you're still alive in the other time

our memories drawn by the eddies of the slipstream

& in twenty years the puppy curled on my lap

would persist longer than your voice

you tear yourself apart

looking for a summer token , some relic

to give back into the river's surface

a barnacled spike wrested from the foundered

warships off to the north of the island

know that in my dreams I've never left

cupid's paintbrush breaks up through igneous rock

rewetting and the ashes

black ink in the rainwater

embedded in all those childhood dreams

we have already forgotten