Something Brighter than Pity
We learned swans in origami. Hours folding and unfolding Sternums. We hunted our beach For brighter sea hulls. And found A drowned dog. Pale Glyph of dog, washed still, unferal. Like a hearth extinguished. We could see the wind In its fur and the water A fallow field color. The branches we poked At its dorsal blade, touching The curious there of hereafter. Whose. How did it arrive. It was the year we learned To swim. We rose every time To the sun already west of us Like a saint leaving a typhus city.