MARK IRWIN

Peeling

the potato I remember how long it took you

to come back from the dead, from the stupor of mud and exhaustion

of ash. The apples you dispatched in dream were right on cue

with the hawk whistling over pines, over my bed

till your volutes of speech turned in the air and a bank of stars

throbbed above. The smell of sulfur

lingered from a mine into which a child was shoveling

snow. I think of everything now, the space between a shattered

glass and a glacier’s fracture through which your

hand reached, an animal all itself made of time, then I read

your note, the poverty of words—sounds eager—

then and now, fleeing over the page.