too many days

moon,

there have been too

many days between us.

And I think I’m getting

lazy.  Or maybe
 I’m coming down
 with something.

Now—is this terrible

to say? Now I don’t want

to look up.

Now I prefer you

on the surface

of moving or still water

like those tides I knew,

Bay of Funday

tides—where if I

watched the flats

long enough,

without looking up,

you’d simply run out

of ocean if the tide

was going

or make slow gains

if the tide was coming.

You were a wide line

in a clear sky

 the all-day August

  sun drying

the sand to crust

the bugs loved

because

 they could get there,

wherever there was,

quicker.

Maybe I need

haiku for you.  I’ve always

taken far

too long to get

to the end of the tide.

And maybe I do that

because I don’t want

endings—

only shifts in footing

seem to make sense

to me.  Like one

drop of water.

It’s as much a mirror

as that broad pond

behind the salt

marsh—and those shore

greens my friend

picks, the goose-tongue
  

growing near the edges

of the wet.

But the surface

of that pond

is unblemished

while she picks, and I wonder:

how long would

one drop of water
beading on the closed

balls of blooms
in her garden

ripple out?

Because falling

it picks up speed—

even far across the yard,

from the green tongue

of that peony leaf

to the surface

of the grass—

I wonder: does the earth

ripple the way water

ripples?  Is there a shudder

of touch?  Before it?

After it?

Maybe because 

of all this there’s something

 to be said

for

 the space

 between

a puddle

dry earth

and sea,

and how you spread

across it,

a broken road.

I’ll sit in the dark

part of it

if you don’t mind

and wait.  For what?

I’m not really sure.

Shorter days

between us? 

Longer?  It would require

lifting my head.

You’ve been gone

so long

I can’t do it instantly,

or instinctually.