brown at its wide mouth
far enough that the bongo drummers
and tambourine players
won’t bother to see
beneath the copper sunset
lovers bobbing with soft waves
gulping in air between mouths
full of the other
and afterward
what remains will open like moonlight
over the water like the wild
shapes of desire and distance
ships ablaze at sea
like the blur of molecules around that fire
and the jumping shadows on the water’s surface
or perhaps left over will be nothing more
than a quick coalescence of chemicals
and whatever else has loosened from us
like ghosts hungry for abandon
will wash to shore nameless
with the fractured husks and bones
of fish dead a thousand years
learning the depths of other
lonelier darknesses.