Unseen hands lift the veil of fog from the river
like a mystery licking between the toes of your eyes
and a kitten beneath the picnic table

Buddy, in this poem,
a man exhales smoke straight
into the cold market of the sun
there and back again.
A volcano in reverse

There are broken promises between the River and the Sea.
I shouldn’t say anything, but listen, the Sea stayed up all night.
Drinking until dawn.
And it wasn’t the first time.

Your mother’s face
shines behind a glare in the patio glass
but she isn’t there
rising like smoke in the wind behind a building,
that heals all your wounds at once
but cracks the sternum of the sky.

Waves of heat in the orange piss of the air
the clear, clean toilet water of the sky.
School buses gestating in the asphalt womb of the city,
idling in the moments nearest the end of the afternoon
when students of the lie became children of the ideal,
their hearts tucked safely back
beneath the wings of their desires.

We put the finishing touches on your ashes
with the fingers of the wind.
The marriage of flecks of bone and the wet August snow.
Everybody knows
there’s no difference between the shadows of fish in the river
and the stories my grandfather told
as he baited the hooks with cat food
and never laughed once.