Loss

And it was not a question
of choosing but of being myself

the choice. This is how

water arrives, in drizzle,

in droplets, drench, drown.

I am a creature kept

alive. My question is:

What am I kept from?

Rattle of coins at the bottom of a cup.

Rattle of devils in the mind.

And I can count my way back

to the moon by hoofbeats

sounding the map to the stars.

No number, no

sum, not all the atoms

of fog can tell why

I am a shell left singing

of wind’s absence,

the motion of something moving

otherward, waves being taken away.