• Hawk-dropped, the body appears first
• as abrasion, a bruising of the concrete drive

• slight as noon’s shadow, as Icarus’s falling
• through flame and spectacle to the margin
• Breughel foregrounded in a sea
• of emerald oil.

1. At ten, I taught myself to see
• only distance; I believed the world scaled

• far enough down might narrow
• toward grace, the human figured too

• outsized to enter. Miniature library, kitchen,

• music room: each weekend I’d bevel, and stain,
• and glue: the piano

• the finale, dark walnut gloss spanning my hand, lid extended
• like a broken wing—

1. More glissando
• than fester, the torso unzips
• to an ivory question, spine

• levitating free
• of its shock of slate fur.

1. After a week, barely a gray smudge
• mars the driveway’s grainy canvas.

1. However I had imagined my life
• was elaborate as lace, and woven
• mostly of air.

• No spoil; only vacancy.

• Height, and length, and bend, all curl
• to a tiny shepherd’s hook, nearing
• erasure, insects devouring

1. distance, what seemed
• sanctuary, what let God
• forget us, perhaps, though most
• drought-driven days I just believe in heaven

• eternally empty. Cloudless
• from here, though the weather

1. says rain, an illuminated map
• glossing a small shadow’s gathering
• away from a coast
• saw-toothed with fishing villages

1. beneath the radar
• homing in on the storm far from earth’s shudder

• at fault line, the swell
• first merely gentling the farthest-out boats
• forty-three minutes will surge

• to harbor wave, the bone-white land
• going under.

Note: “Harbor wave” is the literal English translation of tsunami.