Beach Camping - (for Sam W.)

As I eat my chili with a plastic spoon

As the Amtrak passes by

And wood smoke blows around me, imprinting my clothes

I listen to this  s o u n d

    Sometimes I hear it; other times I don't

It makes me think of you,

how you mixed your saliva with it

    just half a year ago

You once looked out at the horizon, surfboard under your arm

buoyant with hope

As the sound slams towards me,

you are here

    Your warm body in the cold ocean

And as the sound hushes flat,

you ebb away

    carried out to the eely blackness

the length of time you will be gone: eternity

I miss you with every pump of my heart

    A heart which had so intimately wrapped around you

I call for you

    Your name hangs and hangs but doesn't land

I'm only answered by the sand

thrown down by gravity in a lusty detonation

    Your absence leaves the world so barren

My ears are hoarse

and filled with fog

I can't hear you calling back to me

    We once ate chili together 

Berlin photos

 

Pretty Blue Paper

Grandma had saved

 about 50 sheets of pretty blue paper

 with rounded corners

The blue is like

 powdered cornflowers

 or milk in the lake

I found the paper in her desk drawer

 after she died

And I knew she had thought it was too good to use

 so it stayed in its cedar box

Until I found it and took it home

 where it lies in my drawer

 for the exact same reason