The Remains of the Night

the moon falling into a well and not coming out

an 18-wheeler on an exit ramp gargling with compressed air

the owl’s open eye the owl’s closed eye

the hypothetical fact of a fox a rumor of a coyote

the skillet under two eggs sunny side up

familiar recorded music the bits that still surprise

my heel where i landed hard on a sharp stone yesterday

snag of a hemlock its roots becoming tunnels

groundwater feeding the stream feeding the sewage plant

a patched railroad track’s bright seam of weld

my attempt to see contrails too as kintsugi

giving each other side-eye at the polling place

the basket of black ballpoint pens

hand-colored cards feeding the machine

afterwards a storm drain cover’s iron mandala

the condemned building its quartzitic foundation stones

the shallow pits where they were quarried

high on the mountainside traffic roaring below

my lungs laboring non-stop for 56 years

sap congealed in globs on black cherry bark

seeming to have a taste in the way good water does

remembering nothing of my dreams i chew and chew