Simon Perchik

These graves listen to you
though they lean too far
half side to side, half

taking hold your spine, blinded
in front by sunlight, in back
by its endless bending down

as if together these bones
would steady you, in time
your limp disappear

already the small stones
buried here, there, in any open
to tell you what happened.

You come here to bathe—the dirt
warm though the ocean underneath
is breaking apart on the rocks

—you almost drown, crushed
by the immense light
covered over grave after grave

and all these stones adrift
beneath your hands and one day more
lower and lower, washed

with the drop by drop
oozing out your shadow
the way roots still flow past

for flowers and your hands
filling with hillsides
with waves that once had hair.

As if its nest is too shallow this branch
tests for rocks the way streams
are nourished by the same sea whose roots

still reach out for shoreline and stars
already drinking from the night sky
—you wait for the nest to rise

and though what flows past is the tree
is the time it takes its leaves not yet
the waves spreading across

broken apart for echoes and edges
that need a place to grow beside
ripen into birdcalls that all along

die in no ones arms, die in the black smoke
poured over them and every sunset now
gropes for the twigs it left behind

as fruit and listening—you settle in
unable to dry or promise it anything
that breathes, that sings or children.