Here’s the muck-making squalor
we’ve emerged from—slime
returned for,

scholar: shells, seeds, driftwood, scat.
Jeweled pools; breakwater’s
neap and slack

tides hoick up seeped oyster pulp
buckled in the rush.
Slushed polyps

rollick, sifting rocks;
wrack-wrought rot…

Now the dead are entering
our world. Sing, poet,
and linger

in the resurrected voice.
Notes, so charged, they change
you: the void

speaks back. Quivering of flesh—
arrowing instant’s
river. Flash-

in-the-pan. Cumbers
us, kindles.

Because nothing will return
to you, day’s light dims
through turning—

each bright star, each morning burns
itself away. Clouds
die, are born,

die again. Their lapsed mass scrims
vast distance, listing
to a rim

where more absence lies.
And you live.