Out on a milky ocean, fuzzy gray with streaks of silver
and here and there a thread of blue or white like sunlight in aged hair
I saw bodies drowning.
Unable to cling to their scraps and wrecks,
descending in slow fading trails into the dark mystery,
(these fuse-tail duds, sparking bright and sizzling to dull and smoky ends before the powder stops, or curls of blue-black ink rising from blown candles)
these smoke people rising downward all around me
and I saw that I was like them:
All these guts of fireflies,
waiting on a tyrant child’s thumb and forefinger
to crush us into moments of bloody wonder
before we fade into smears of irrelevant gore on the asphalt.
But my raft is sturdy, and I cannot see the bottom
And although I am tired of this fog, and
although I shut my eyes against this fog, and although
I think I will always be with this fog,
I can carry a small light.
I am no twisting smoke, winding into unlit fathoms,
am not a gliding seabird on migration to the sun,
but here in the mist I may yet scrape to landing
on the pebbles and rough rocks of some wild shore.