oars without boats burn a
drawl of last lamps explains
the permanent clouds

ghosts dust the lake each year
lakes float the sky waiting to
die into the ground

the clouds for months soften
a paper birch
what will be lost
when the voiceover explains
our absence?

rainweed explains
the doom of lamps
in a drawl
as long as
September

I think I'm becoming
a small boat without oars
floating in the middle of a lake
that dries up each year

the whimper's in the rain
that falls like end credits,
the whimper's in
the commercial for coffee
that keeps us waiting for the
news when it is the news

a kind of unkindness tugged

my mind when the lake hung
above like a dust ghost in the
shape of a gavel head

some stories we don't write
just end wrong: a boy burned
in silver fire, 500 seals
slathered in oil, a poison lake
abandoned by the state

here's a storm's absence
welcome to the propaganda of
calm. We end with the news
with a voiceover reading our
names like weedflowers