Some months before I drowned
arms crossed like spars
they made the lake
graders, slowly feeding insects
in the dead beast’s well
a skin of mud exuding
in tracks gouged deep as no man’s land
across lawns and paths and roads
as if this growing death
would poison half the world
now trees protrude like grief
from reflections of themselves
in a Rorschach aftermath
the boat skims like a leaf
loosed and unhomed, with that drifting
impermanence of life
of tides and swells in gutters
and rips in stormwater drains
hungry in the way of ghosts
on blue winter days
the rising smoke
of slow evaporation
subsumed and sublimated
lines grown blurred and weak
in the chrysanthemum of morning
a paper boat unfolds
