She’s been trying too hard
to wrap some light
around her little finger.

She will celebrate the fact
that fireflies are actually beetles.

She worries
about the lone wild turkey
lurking outside the ice rink

the way she never would
that gang of toms.

She once considered jet propulsion while getting ready to spend
a night with a chain of salps.

She has wanted to be his
muse when all along

she needed him
to be hers. A secret walk-in
closet leads to a walk-on

part in a walk-out phase
with no apparent end.

Even our sun will die eventually.
I had forgotten how cold
it will get inside. How haunting
the drone must be on the way outside in
the galactic underworld. How lonely
for those of us left behind
searching for the light
in the wrong sky. And so it is
with this parallel eddy in the ocean—
another black hole to try to resist,
or give up the ghost as we pour more
ancient sticky water to drink.

When I die, throw me
a wedding, not a wake.
Celebrate my marriage
to the earth with the same gusto
I was never betrothed while I breathed.
Wrapped in a mushroom shroud,
through aquamation or human composting,
or nourishing the fish

in an eternal reef, I promise
to be true to the only home I’ve known.
Staying up all night (waking
neighbors belting out drunken ballads)
surrounded by bodies—been there,
done that. So last century.

A drizzly morning up north
on the fourth Thursday in November

takes its time to clear.

The storytellers hide from other truths
in tulle veils:

wedding or funeral, birdcage or blusher.

We all do it. I’m so guilty,
my hands stained with bruise

colored ink expose another

underwater smoke screen.
I’ve looked it up before.

I remember the initial thick part,

the obscuring middle,
the final mist.

I’ll look it up again as I move closer

to the sea grasses and beg
more clouds to touch the ground.

I will find
the poetry

in a sound lantern.
It’s not hard to do.

Back then, he did, indeed,
have those long, hollow cheeks.

A candle flickered in his mouth
when he sang.

I never had a match
for him. They spilled

from my pockets
for years after the last time

we. Then no more.

I never lived
in a lighthouse with

anyone, no matter how hard I tried
to will it. All those empties

rolling off the bluff
into the sound. And

another. So many
kinds to choose from.

The last word
no one dares pick.

Nor the means:
spoken, sung, whispered, signed,

or transmitted inside
a moving billow of water.

A crow flies overhead
as the fog clears
to reveal a ravine.

And this is how
we say good-bye.

I accidentally tuck my bag
into the bin
wheels out.

And this is
how we say good-bye.

The rental car agent
mistakes me for a wife.
Tells my friend I can drive

the vehicle too.
Asks if we are headed to a wedding.
Wrong on all three counts.

This is how
we say good-bye.

Memories of discovering
a baby squid along the Connecticut shore
and watching “Search for Tomorrow”

in a crooked old house
the university tore down
to build a new athletic facility.

This is also how
we say good-bye.

We wind our way up Mount Tam
to watch the sun set.
For some of us, motion sickness

and pressure in the ears
interfere with the view.
And this is how

joy and grief collide in the margins.
The edge of the sea, all that laughter,
those throwaway asides

are precisely
how we say good-bye.

Crow or raven? And now
I cannot remember the shape
of the beak, or sound

of the bird’s call—
merely a streak of black
scraping against the sky.

And wouldn’t he reply
a feather is just a feather,
a bird is just a bird, after all?