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.