Up a sandy trail, under a moon that drowns 
cracked and choked in night’s sinking sea,
I run through the swimming dark, tracked.

Throat-greedy and tick-heavy, your memory hounds
ricochet through sand pine and palmetto sharp.
Or a bear-trap, rust-keen and stubborn-jawed, 
limp dragged by snapped lyre-sinew and a dumb 
heart.  Muzzled with your remains: you,
cross-legged on the beach boardwalk rail,
lap-journal, lips full and articulate.

“He saw a slip of sun, just like that,” you pointed
East, “and doubted.”  Clapped the pages.  “She paid.”

Sunrise. The mute apocalypse behind me.  
But clasped over trail on a final twig, beak
and eyes granite-grey, long-tailed and blue,
spring blue, crisp and dry after cold front
blue.  Its song no scratchy weep: the call
falls in mallet-strokes, in heaving stone
grunts, and sometimes milled, guttural, like grout; 
a hammer song to square and stack, chisel, forge;
that rebuilds the world without you to whisper, 
the raspy warble growing in the wilderness scrub.