The driftwood and I shrink
In the stillness of a black sand beach for 2000 years
And some 20 more
Because Time can reach as far as
Fingertips,
Last the length of shadows on wild ice,
An inexorable surface.
Soft and strong
It is much like skin in that way;
Currents moving within
And a number of hearts thrust upon it.
A girl who writes it down
Knows that these silent things are not for conquering:
Impermiable to the kings of speech,
Who are but atoms after all.
Sprawled before the sunsets
And glittering highways
Of a frozen periphery
They too lie in a fragile bed,
With the driftwood and I.
So we have built a word
For bad weather.
The milky way might have grinned
Itself out of curvature
In light of this,
If it were not already humble –
The opposite of words,
Which can be red as anger.
A man-made magma
Of the mind,
The word designed for bad weather and I
Will ocupy a space
Between sky and
Salt water,
For just a while now.