Like everything else they are
like nothing else—

intricate and simple:

On rocky Delos, no births or deaths were allowed
to desecrate the spirits of the stones—
but how did the keepers tell the dying

Once upon a time. A six-year-old boy almost might be raising himself
from the waters of sleep, onto a beach made glass as a wave’s sheet pulls taut.
His left arm props his torso, his legs (still sleeping?) trail behind like a seal’s

Long past that moment,
                I might guess when it was,
                but strangely I have no

Thorn teeth gnaw white bread and ketchup.
Instant audition on my haunches; her sack cheeks
turning away. Hands tacky on the cup.

Out of love we fall ten times a day,
out of the marrow, out of luck,
out back into distractions and joys we rip off from prey,

Begin to arrive
Like the toothpaste of his mother’s hug

On the back of a giant moon

Bathwater smells like it.
Like when you turn left off Percival
onto Smallwood and pass Old Percival

I test the seasonal rains to see
if they construe how light matters.
Each evening as the clouds happen,

When I feel the old thirst coming on
I think of my great-great-aunts,
the farmer’s disappointments, adorning