Wheat swirls like water
in its frame of field.
The ground falls
behind my heels. Chaff,
gathered by the wind,
returns and settles
as snow.
     The past owns
one sign in the hand
language of mutes. You wave
from the distance. I want
to return, to follow,
but this boat, the bodies
of men who would have
been trees, slips on the rough
blade of a beach.
In the swollen air
I find my legs, stumble into
a wilderness of words.