I feel home in my throat,

in the black night with bats,

the imperfect tense:

when an action which begins in the past
is interrupted and remains incomplete

I wrap myself with a dry towel

It’s the surface I love What I can see
Perfect light What I can touch

A river that fears reversal

A train that has not yet stopped

My son is stronger than he weighs,
like a fish

Both concave and flexed

And we buy bread we know we don’t need

We fly a kite down the smooth abdomen
of a valley

Narrators, lost tales, ghost-tellers