keening

Time is told from either side

the clock grinding on the wall

the time until and the time since

turning over together

in the compost of your thinking,

from the dazzle mechanic to

the bride of the sky, from dead pet to

dead pet, with the dead elders to

work the earth of days and dreams.

The word itself arrives a great bird,

high and sharp against

the dark parts of heaven, a sound

too soaring and sinking at once,

as if itself a placeholder 

part of some unnavigable inheritance

left over from the syllabary of seafarers,

a word to attach to the sojourns of

the albatross or some sailor’s salty longing 

gazing at the moon drowning as

the ache for another halfway ‘round the world.

It is to say that my heart

is a ravening animal and

a faithful flame, it is a wing turned

into the cold and brutal wind,

it is a letter sent towards uncertain shores,

a voice sure and sudden,

a weeping through the evenings seams.