the cold riverbank
hazel and silver after rain
cattails dripping the almost stillness
liquid streaks
down trunks of bare trees
faint trickle of the familiar
where we walk two
together and each
apart
distant houses shrink and darken
in the orchid twilight
overripe in the west
clouds bruise
into night edges tinging
an afterlife
thirty years and no words
as faithful
as an ordinary solitude
our breath geysering
before us brown grasses
sheened by the rains
