A wide shoal of land abuts the salt marshes.
Water rouged by bog iron decants
across flat plains, stunted pines.
The wind’s long limbs end in talons.
Years of unsettled work slip
into a basin beneath knowing—
roads, trails, wayward signposts, towns—
Atsion, Brooksbrae, Weymouth, Whitesbog—
all swallowed by shadows, vines, and years.
Although it is still day, the tattered lace
of the moon hovers, pale gray against pale
blue, a watchtower filling the cast sky
like the veiled face of the angel Paniel,
the angel of judgement, whose name means
“the face of god”—its phosphorous presence
beyond language, leaching what it looks on.