I Try to Hear the Island Disappearing

To hear cigarette as only a sound, none
of those ashes on the red leather,

Wild rose and no taste of fuchsia petals between my teeth,
bathing suits drying on the rocks –

And tapdance free of the clicking in Helene’s basement,
her red hair, it all coming undone.

Highway empty of the cold, all those songs,
asphalt_ buckled with frost,

And frost, not my fingers going numb, scratching
forests of it from those old storm windows –

Window minus the slate roof, slate minus
my father on the scaffolding every spring –

To feel autumn in my mouth and not be
back in it, shoes untied in a yellow classroom.

Let cemetery mean nothing,
no white butterflies, cold shade, no view of the

Ocean hear ocean devoid of the
noon whistle, the flag becalmed or gonging all night

In the wind. To hear the clear absence of a life –
to stand under the streetlamp

Without any snow sifting down through the orange light,
without any histories stapled to the telephone pole.