THE EBB 

     I. 

Did he know his aliveness, as he lifted his arms 

like the red petals of a poppy flower 

swept in the wind, under the door, 

into the dark? Yesterday was a holograph: 

the bead of dew, the blue brushstroke 

on the canvas apron, the craters of moon, 

the catching breath of fire. Today, 

he was a dimming ember: left his guitar 

in the corner to gather dust, danced alone 

in the pressing darkness. He would lean 

out the window and wait for sparrows 

to land on his shoulders with frost 

lacing his soft petals of chest, would sing

sparrow, sparrow, and it was as though

he was plucked by his tender stem and

left on a forest floor to fade into earth.

     II. 

A canvas, leaning deep in the darkness, raised

into memory: age twenty-three, Coney Island,

a knish, a ruffled halo of golden hair. I invert the window

and enter: you stand with sneakers filled with sand

and wait for the moment when the sky and the ocean 

are the same shade of gray, your body folded 

around itself like a paper swan, a steaming potato knish 

in a paint-streaked fist. My possibility pulsates in

your cells and I become you, your silent lips, 

squinted eye and lifted thumb, the distance 

between the moon and the tide. How could 

you know, how could you know 

that you, too, will ebb into time 

and be stretched onto your gessoed canvas, 

will be pressed there to lean in the corner, 

like a deserted portrait, a shade

or a consolation?