for Yemọja

my mother keeps track of time by how much rain falls
heavenwards. i know it is night because there’s a torrent
& the grim reaper blades through the whirl. it is night.

are we not nomads in this midnight sea
lonely wanderers between the stars
floating through dreamscape nebulae
tempest tossed on gravity and tides

The atmosphere is breaking.

A puddle stands in the
middle of the street, reflecting
all our cracked
and rotting dreams.

Two bubbles, slick and oily.

It's in pieces: the mind, the Kleenex box with torn openings,
the cables and cord extensions stretched out like the markings of where a round table would be.

The no ending, unending, infinite: the sense of loss;
warm metal carrying the intermittent ticking of the electric surges, Excalibur without its scabbard

Speak of fires, infestations
Mountain pine so unholy
Speak of limb rot, dank rain fungus
Speak of barren lands, absent birds
No beak nor burrow to sow seeds
Of drought that parches to the root
Speak of gale force destruction

the moon doesn’t have shores
it reflects waves, waits
for the tide

have you ever seen the sea on fire?
skin propagates flame like water distorts
depth

The burning comes earlier
and earlier each year, as we march
our way further down this angry path.
Seems I can recall passes
round the sun where snow
still fell in great heaping drifts
from the sky well into March.

It took all night to get to the bottom floor
under the tree roots and the cicadas and the fossils.
Like anyone, I wondered if I’d found the way to Hell,
but there were no screams layered like torn fabric
on one another begging God’s mercy. There were no
flames, no bald bodies crying, stranded across
the ashen floor of an oceanless beach. There were

Last night, I was in a grim, dusty, subdued Poland,
like a modern theatrical production imagining medieval gloom,
bleached palette, pre-industrial quiet, charred air.

waves crashing over us
i said goodbye to your

         two hands cupping a prismatic star
         shining lighthouse bright
         over dark, indigo waters