Small white church at the edge of my yard.

A bell will ring in a few hours.

People who believe in eternity will sing.

I’ll hear an emotion resembling the sea from over a hill.

One time I sat with my back to the church to give their singing
to my spine, there’s a brown llama you can watch
while you do this in a field if you’d like to try.

I don’t even think calendars believe in eternity.

Beyond the church is a trail that leads to a bassinet in a tree.

Someone put it there when the oak and sky were young.

I’m afraid to climb the tree.

That I’ll find bones inside.

That they’ll be mine.

I want to be with my wife forever but not as we are.

She’ll become a bear, I a season: Kodiak, spring.

Part of loving bagpipes haunting the gloaming is knowing
the bloodsinging will stop.

Beyond the church I pulled a hammer from the river.

What were you building, I asked its rust, from water and without nails?

This is where I get self-conscious about language,
words are love-affairs or séances or harpoons, there isn’t a sentence
that isn’t a plea.

This is where I don’t care that I’m half wrong when I say everything
is made entirely of light.

This is where my wife and I hold hands.

Over there is where our shadows do a better job.