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.