My long shadow paces and the skreak of gulls
hauls evening down and furls it along the edge of the lake.
Waves keep thrusting their political argument.
Resolved: you are not here.
Resolved: wind surges in the cottonwood leaves,
the whole mass billows into the leaky sky
flailing toward an almost invisible horizon.
Nothing is resolved.
The trees are amateur actors, their gestures too large.
Fending off, holding out, concrete blocks of the breakwater
stud the shore … Not to let that vast
crushingness roar in, that inland sea.
Civic wastebaskets guard the day’s relics,
the small bronze drinking fountain is dry.
And is your not being here different
from my absentmindedness, or yours, when we sit together,
or walk, each absorbed in private weather?
The discipline it takes, to keep these pathways tidy.
And night leans in to erase the map.