by Ford McDonald
for N
you tell me in silver beams
the moon pulls upon you
like soft fingers through hair
like the sea-tide whispers
within the soft bellies
of hatchlings channeled
out of black whispers
water and light paints blue
the world as an open tomb
on the other side of erosion’s
wound hums fluorescent
yellow like deceit like a road
goes on forever beneath false
moons where so many of us
are dying tragedies
that outweigh our god given
scutes as frail as a flower
our monocarpic mother trusts
us with the way love moves
like the gentle hands of a current
sowing language in the reef
suffering the small deaths
from which ocean
gardens grow
you tell me the stars are dying
fish and we are seed after death
pouring out the shell like an offering
the organ of time slowly leaking of heat
like punctured gravity our finality bubbles
out like its own sky above
the earth erupting a salt-melody of sand
dissolving the bone of our bodies
into cosmic shadow
the flesh of water
flowing back to
inland shores
Ford McDonald is an engineer and writer whose poems have appeared in Sky Island Journal, Texas’s Best Emerging Poets, and eleven40seven. He currently resides in Dallas.