Anne

17

Were we six or seventeen
when the dock was still made of sturdy brown wood
which I called rock bread
and you, red maple?
We sat, swinging our feet in time with the waves
clicking ice cubes against the backs of our teeth.
This is forever but I see a cloud like a clock and you--
you do not know that the sky is like the dream-catcher hanging from my bed
artificial and deceiving; a mask of truth
[we are not forever, you know]
I am glaring at the blue, so much blue like sky like sea like man like woman
I know, I'm not that stupid
and you close your eyes and slip from the sun-baked dock
like water to rejoin the ocean

Ten seconds-hours-months-years later you appear
[Hello]
the sky is burning, falling on the wings I gave you long ago
[How could you. How could you.]
my eyes are hot and body cold and there is—
there it is, the blue and the blue
I crush the point of convergence between my fingers, sprinkling its dust.

the sky and sea want each other
seep into each other in an infinite line

you dimple slightly, point to the crumbling structure
rock bread, or red maple?
I frown, stomach roiling like a stormy ocean.

[Are you well]
are you good with work, with children, with freedom I gave you
I can see your wings. I can recognize
they are made from the feathers of my dream-catcher
and I do not move because you do with such agility.
I will watch
and you will cut the infinite line with a slice of your dream-wings
up and up into the clock-cloud and the blue of man
and I
I will observe and learn backwards
and fall off the creaky old dock with unpracticed clumsiness;
sink and sink but I am flying negatively to the ocean floor
to the blue
to watch the image of you become smaller, ever smaller
to see the patterns of moving water I could never attain.