october crashes, saltsea on gravel,
a single voice, body cants, the nerve strings played,
a dull decade’s rain with sunny intervals.

a. is in another room, tortured with a year-long deathwatch,
working until she dissolves. r. was a false minister.
s. was too little and too late, a fog of commas.

it goes on.

birds volley south. leaves in their tinctured
silence, salting the earth. you were, in your way,
perfect. neither of us knew that.

a weather’s guises. your stone in the heart
pointing north.

and time, bunching like thread in a needle’s eye,
or drawn like supple wire from then to then to now,
a tightrope as it turns out,

a day’s poise, another.