300. 9.0

Dreams come stubbornly through blackness

Come as water
Come as rumbling
Come invisible and insistent

Dreams hold on stubbornly until there’s light

(there is no light)

Taken
as we are taken from
water as we are made in and pulled from
water as we live beside water
and together looking out over
flat water

we do not imagine
the earth shaking
water rising up
to find us
to wash over us

The sea rises without a heart

The earth stumbles and falls

Somewhere a light goes off

Can you feel
the weight of not sleeping again?

Do you see the darkness
or that that lies within the dark?

The trouble with morning is
that it doesn’t understand dreaming
and the trouble with dreams is
that they do not persist

Sometimes the smallest crack in the pavement

Sometimes the smallest one

Sometimes nothing

lets us see
what’s there

We see it coming
after it hits us

for some like rolling
over us and the crush and the drag

for some like cracking

for others only jostling

You, far enough away
for jostling

not enough to avoid
regret

it leaves a taste in the mouth

salt
or water
just wetness
or dust
maybe crumbling

a taste like falling

and they’ve already fallen
but we keep seeing them fall

enough people to fall like water
each one a drop

a few minutes

and nothing’s left

If the coast had been Atlantis
there would have been a gentleness to the water

a small rising
and a sinking of everything
in

the water still dark
and cold

but comforting

We live on a fault

It is ours

We didn’t request it
but must accept it

the world is unsteady
and will knock us down

water will come at us
and will knock us down

and we’ll never find everyone we have lost

even if we dream it
even if we stubbornly dream for it

in the dark
through the dark

dreaming of shaking
dreaming of water

Do you know the number of people it takes
to forget who is gone?

Do you remember the weight of the water
before it fell on them?

Neither do I

So I give you a poem
because it is like giving you nothing
and taking nothing away

because it changes nothing

though it tries to remember it all.

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