Vigils

Savage the light at the end of the field the light
that in my breath comes missing you. You

ineluctable – avoiding me a void my body stark
in this drenched page of night and me the only

un-inked thumbprint – rising from it topographic – undark
map of mountain let me be mapped not mountainous.

Smoothed more alluvial than faces – my only, printed into
loam this earth – this, purveyor of departures, coming always-

changed. Dross of absence changing what's arriving
unlike the rhyme of magpie, metallurgy – a bird, unlike

before is gone. Unlike a fencepost I will soil soak and so
absolve myself – so alter nothing, but the wrung earth

oak-wrought. Still water at my stilling at my gift parting
into parts of nothing comes mud-clover, cloud:

un-cinched coming home. Come home silver animal,
you wild light – combs water through your fur.

Furred unlike an edge of dawn gray clouds of doves furring
in the long rim of rinsing. Pewter iris soothing into

lids of field lashed in frost: in this field I am seeing
all I have is animal – you wild and your motion

sleepless rain magnetic down a pane. Unlike this indigo
I night-herd: fabric lashed with vague thumbs turning burred

to night. My vigil-body muting into rows of clover
red unlike the cough of wind – irreverent, all ways arriving at

from plots beyond. Yonder furrows shovel azure into lines
of daggered sea, shifting immutably awake – a start.

A palette of sighs a pentimento sloughing into
penny-scented clover stars an apiary all windows asleep.