It floated in on the edge of our sight
like the ghosts of lost animals. We watched
it gather on the ocean, drift over white steeples,
red houses tiny as monopoly pieces
on the peninsula below. We were eating
lunch on the peak of Mount Franey, a peach,
an apple, while it pushed its way up the peak.
On the trail, it closed us in
like puffs of smoke, like a bright moon
vaporizing. A strange bird
pecked at gray grasses. Everything had become
a shade of gray and we walked like shades
through these shades, the dark figures
of trees emerging like soldiers from white
fields, their rifles in their cradled arms shining.
We saw we swore we saw a pink shape
in the distance. An umbrella, a circle
of people looking down at a map. They pointed
at us and we pointed them in the direction
of the cliffs. That is where they needed to go.
A young boy dragged a stick leaving the forest
behind. Willows hovered rootless and we
floated beside each other in the glow
of diffused light. Drops drizzled
down my chin, down the insides of my thighs.
Our hands met and though they were
too wet to hold, we slipped into each other,
into white woods where we’d heard the calls
of moose, their bellows deep in our bellies,
wings from the grasses their antlers rising.