Dawn has barred the wall
with a hundred horizons, and the map
that brought me here
crumbles in my hands.
The only footprints
on the foreshore
are the ones I stand in.

She was smoke, a slow-burning
ocean-driftwood saltiness,
and my tongue
shaped her, round as laughter.
Her voice raked my back,
a shivery night-wind holding me.

The wall I wake to
is tideless sand, miles
beyond miles, and a sand-colored
sky where a single bird shears,
his thin flight saying:
It was not always so!

I lay with closed eyes
under her warm sprawl, the smoke,
the salt, the taste of smiling.

And now, with new hands I scoop
handfuls of sunlight,
and the empty morning
breaks from my face.