Lambency, The Gentle Glow:

Notes On Rebirth Before An English Channel Crossing

I remember mostly-

The raw horizon pounding with a glowing fever.

A young girl standing on an English Beach under the moon.

The strand made of tortoiseshell stones and coastal erosion.

Fed to the brine and of course to you.

They call you “La Manche.”

The English Channel.

“A sleeve with one flaring end.”

“The arm of the Atlantic.”

Today was the first time I saw your wings.

He gutted the fish with a knife and ten fingers.

Pulsing, purple, and overripe.

The night that Mercury dreamt of you and then wouldn’t sleep for months.  

The farmer of tumors and English pastures.

Maybe holy or full of you.

What I mean to say is.

How you were leaking and nuclear.

How much you wanted gills.

So flushed in the anticipation of the millions of black strokes away from the moon rocks.

I know you are jealous of me, God.

Celebration of the sun.

How much we will miss you.

Aching, unable, and lunary.

I imagine sheep make a creche out of clifftops and grass.

She still looks at me like I’m little.

We once baptized you in the pond and you went everywhere.

How much I’d miss you, my Dover of dreams.

Americanize me.

Moaning and hallucinatory in the half light.

I have always been yours.

What was meant to be a rendezvous.

What was meant to be a fever dream.

Page one: God looks down on a baked earth.

You as a swan song.

An ocean menagerie, schizophrenic and flickering before the flood.

And the way you were wild.

You, the only salmon.

This, the only way home.

There was the summer you grew six inches.

Unstable teepees. How they thought you were a fish.

Star light. Star bright. First star I see tonight.

We could live in outerspace.

The native game.

The game of reaching.

Dear you.

Born on a full moon, you are me and not me.

A sort of gushing of course.

The great divide cuts across our metallic land, tonight.

What is like you? Pluto is like me.

You can hear the bells from all over England. They are much like a farewell.

The bruise in the sky is both hanging and oozing.

There are no words exchanged during a moon landing.

I cannot think of a world where I won’t love you for always.

You look beautiful in the blue glow.