You slumber through the afternoon,
turning under the waves like weather,
and now, after dinner, after ros,

my knuckles smack of charred cedar:
the plank we soaked to grill

the white-pink heaps of walleye.
Smoke of continuance
strung across me now, straight blade
of radio through the gut-low trees
yielding halfway to the stone fence.
(Your bronzed clouds, lobster sun,
and the rain clinging to itself just as the idea of rain clings
to itself—refuses sky, refuses to stay.)