Rain at night when it's warm.

Don't make us all ask again.

We woke up while walking,

then woke another way.

If only we could wake

all the day's and days'

gravel to being.

Lightning clapped our chambers,

an arrhythmia that never set.

The molten ring you showed

us as you looked at us

through it was gorgeous,

but we didn't know it was there.

Rain at night when it's warm, then,

and remind us that you doused the torch.

An eclipse coming from the sidewalk

as gentle, subtle steam?

Is that the seam left unfixed

by the seamsters and seamstresses?

The stitch between skin and metal

that won't move, or won't release?

There were ways we felt along

that we don't feel and don't even remember

until they come back as tremors,

as if from a future life we have missed

already at the last corner, or seventy-three

turns ago. To feel is to be lit with melt sparkles,            glow

not to feel is to forget.

What are the field lines our breast            gravity lines our nose

traces in honor of moments past

and others future, others not

ours? The bulbs come back

from sheening tar

splotching with dropped

little collections, recollections

of water. The frogs sound like

crickets, and the crickets sound like

the surf, and we are sometimes

tropical, subtropical, temperate, subarctic, arctic,

sometimes we are all of these together,

bound and stunned. Or it is simply the air talking

to our skin which has been too long indoors.