If moonless night, if cuttlefish ink, if the deepest caves of my body, if shadow/
were a stone that burns, if I felt cannel from a drift on Windrock Mountain,/
carbon dust pricking the old man’s face blue,
B is for Boxes (and other essays)
I imagine this again and again: on a raft, in a passenger car, I’m crouching or sitting and there in the creek, beside the tracks, I see an object but can’t tell what it is, a thing obscured by the murk of the water, the speed of the train. A large rock, or a fallen tree, or broken concrete with rebar, or a wooden box. I don’t want to think it could be a body.