if this 
is how    it must be 
a visible distance    drawing closer 
round us      thin mist rising      as if water     
too       below ground         had its memories 

its long 
held breath    if this        
is how    we lose     each other     
and ourselves        how missing begins 

with things 
becoming spare suggestions 
of themselves     a crookbacked  bareness     

that was never 
so sharply itself      as an oaktree in leaf          

a voice     

that’s slipped its leash    
that walker      by the empty playground       

call-and-calling        
for the dog     that may not be 
in earshot    or this time of his life    each breath-     

sketched-on-a-pane      
least implication of a house    
that’s its own absence    wires from nowhere     
unto nowhere     each still thing      that’s shifted         

when you look again     
mist’s palpable forgetting     that is equally      
remembering    clay’s water body    like a buried cloud    

stream gone to culvert    
storm drain     rush-guttered away      

returning      

like an almost  
caught       but no   

escaping    tune      
a cadence   in the inclination    
of a tree    if this is how we drift      apart      

from ourselves 
distinct at first     then fading         
don’t think     lessness     but dissolving back 
into solution as     look    random    as a quantum thing    

the dog     
comes flitter-pelting   
out of always     elsewhere      into always 
simply       with each swerve     low lithe momentum 
of each moment     forgetting itself    in the next      being here