because I arrived in the dark

what I thought was rain was the river
moving over the mountain of sleep

I woke again and again in a room with three beds
and three poets, heads resting on the soft chests of words

not a sound, not even the sh of restless
sheets, only the breath of the river

threading through poems that might be
sewing this warm inside world to the cold

alpine spring, our almost stories blinking
holes in the high spaces of night

2011

for Laurie and Ellen, KCPF