Size / / /
for Erik Amundsen
Over the damp-blackened slates, the harbor
lights douse and sizzle in the sloping rain,
heaps of cables, netted crates, sacks of grain
unloaded under oilskins; no ship's master
on these docks, signaling like a wrecker,
but what swarms to my lantern in a skein
of foxfire and the bruised scent of vervain
could never drown: I glimpse them only after
their faces have fragmented into earth,
their coldly limned bones, leaf-rags of clothing
restitched, enfleshed within this storm-shot gleam
where my fingers cramp with winter and warmth
invisibly: this candle guides none living,
only the ghosts of children through my dreams.