Michael McGriff

Clouds

I come back to the stain 

of high-water marks

and the green light 

of the water itself

so I can say water 

and mean memory

and with memory I mean 

to trick death

the way clouds 

smuggle their shadows 

across the border

the way a shipping container 

loaded with plastic 

cemetery carnations

is another way 

of tricking death

another way of  saying 

what replaces you today

will soon become 

a narrow valley of cut hay 

filling with rain

or the memory of rain.

Echoes, Argument, & Moon Logic

Because I’ve seen the moon spread 

across Riley’s Inlet and thought, Moon, 

you old head-tilter, you grief-masonry

scoured with horsehair, you thought 

turning red on its heel, you thought

within a thought like a grubby white sock

full of nickels. Because the moon 

has seen a crow stripped of its feathers 

and made to sing to itself in a dull mirror

like a voice falling through its own wound.

And because a wound with a voice 

is what you’ve accused me of turning into, 

what you’ve accused me of tending 

like a straw fire in October.

Because I tack my cheap halo 

to the sagging rafters of the front porch 

and stand beneath it like a bar sign.

Because I stand beneath it and feel 

like a wing passing through the pattern 

in a field. Because I feel like language 

drifting in the slipstream of God.