Cameron McGill

 



 



Morning expands one rib at a time

speaks through the pinktops of pines        On the porch

I write to a friend whose mother has passed

Blue fog is a doe that startles

at my cough        I drink black water from its eye





This isn't about half-dreamt things

The veil over the lake about to boil a man

It's too quiet to answer anything but the tongue-colors

of the east        fern-light slices from a mandoline





My words are bad acreage

I think of taking my friend’s grief     for him holding it

above my head & wading out     It is clear I can see the sand

I tell myself this is helping    this is what the heart looks like working





Each step     the outbreath

There is a boat & a man moving his line

He’s throwing longer & longer threads

to the still dark

           Talking feels canceled when I stand alone

in the forest. Mother, your thinness is a letter

to my worry. I watch you work in the garden.

I confuse solitude with loneliness.

My hair is also grey kisses at sundown.

A doe strafes the ridgeline, until lost

in the thicket, only snapping brush.





           God undressed in an arbor of madness;

I am his mannequin’s shadow.

My eyes empty the last clip of daylight

into the forest, and quietly

the rain on leaves leaves leaves clean.





           A son’s no thing but a map to likeness.

You have tried to make me yours—

I think of the bones you broke to bring me here.

I promise, I am trying to love the world.

Say it is not impossible. Place

your flowers on the sill inside me.