William J. Cordeiro

The field is cropped and cut, shorn flax in flux
where I have snapped it up. Its granules of spoors
cede the road to lucent signatures of shadow,
as evening thins to finger-bones. Come summer's end,
a trace of water-striders ride the surface of a nearby pond
the sunlight tropes, each image broken
by fish that prey on skimming flaws above, black water
overgrown with scum and bracken. Eye-motes like splinters
work in deeper, blend and stain, to take me
where ligatures of our far city's windtrap slants
                                                                           a tarnished silver
of faint, glinting rain. One dream-while of an afternoon
I chance to find your photograph. You stand alone,
your gaze uplifted, shaded by your hand,
which I have sifted, a waterlogged exposure gone
to daze: one face unfading in a darkroom pan.