Hundreds of Miles to the North

Water does not ablate, it is submersion
as smoke around the coal stones of the
shore, on a gravity that is circling in
the depth from the poles to the equator,

tasted in the air flowing through passing
neighborhoods where in some receptive field,
first and last lovers meet beneath dilutions
of clouds that formed a few miles out from

Munising and above the haunted histories of
ship wrecks where sailors are moored in
fatality and wives lost themselves to flotsam
beneath the pink erosion of the hidden sun.

Cries from that first plunge of the bow will
be forever repeated, present with the aqueous
specters of fog and dew amidst branches,
long grasses, broken bottles and rose quartz,

life swallowing life in mouths living in homes
with leaky faucets, holes in asphalt shingles,
ice that tenderly melts cracks in foundations.