PATTERNED GROUND

A light wind touch-searching
an empty bay finds the seam
between skin and cuffs,
opens a fear of bones

under the waves, of nets
of twigs & leaves,
earth in pitfalls of memory.
I am lying in a tent

under mountains that storm
silently against flatness.
The beach is a stone’s throw.
Through the accumulation

of dawns, I feel ice-melt,
the flick of a glacier’s tongue,
ooze hardening under sea.
Stones sleep themselves into circles,

alluvial silts open like a fan
and in the moment it takes
to revolve a continent,
the sun folds itself away.

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