The hills can tell

by how flat your eyes are

how near a thing has become.

Dogs and wolves share a denning instinct.

To dig down.

The straw is a calendar.

What I mean is, my memory

is like my friend who looked down,

his bed-frame torn

into a bed-frame for dawn.

The invited men hide palm wine in the latrine.

These stones, which have known

footsteps different from those of the tide,

are rank with seaweed

crusted in the sun.

Bare feet, you have known me

as a child with brown leaves pasted beneath my toes,

balls of my feet scalded, whorls

smeared like the air 

drawn through a one-armed windmill.

All day the hills come down.

And we fill our cups

to keep our childhood stitches from coming loose.

Maybe we were in love.

Fingertips poised

to save those two boys in our bodies

slipping up the beach of wet stones.