For Night to Fall
You could tell from the start that the best
were frailing. We made the wishes we made,
beside the wishes we also hoped would
come true, for there’s always a difference,
the way what we remember of what happened
is just memory, not history exactly, and
not the past, which is truth, but by then
who cared? The truth by then as a snowy
owl becoming steadily more indistinguishable
from the winter sand in twilight, feathered
emptiness filling/unfilling itself for no one,
no apparent reason – who? who says?
who says the dead are farther away from me
than you are? – across the hard, hard shore.
