The morning’s horn extended a palmful of 
   sand. I felt a dry sprig on my face, frozen
 moment, moment’s omen, sleep’s curtain
                                                                  kicked
   on top. I’d forgotten more about time than 
     I could know I got up knowing, Cold Duck 
 time the time I knew best, head bad beyond
                                                                       all 
   hope. Hand spread, sand uncupped, hand 
extended . . . In the hollow of the morning’s horn
 I felt empty, crook of an arm around my back,
                                                                            I 
couldn’t say whose, wishing it was my father, 
   someone I knew at least, again I was the  
 abandoned one. Hand extended, fingers flat,
                                                                          sand
     falling, the morning’s horn’s hollow abiding,
 unbeknown, something inside it unbound . . . 
   Whatever I thought I knew gone by the way-
side, what I knew about time I got up knowing 
                                                                             bet-
   ter. There’d been a fight between Robert and
Mary was all I knew, names more echo than
 ever, names meaning late not meaning to. It
                                                                          was
actually I was only pretending, what I knew so
   simple I’d gotten weary. Make-believe made it
 more real . . . We sat on the couch eating crab
                                                                          re-
   membering Robert and Mary, snug in the cul- 
de-sac, Duck weathering well, real, we wanted 
 to say, beyond compare. Beyond repair I heard,
                                                                               mis-
     heard, we sat on the couch, copacetic, nothing
 such occurring to us . . . “Down at the café,” we
   made fun of the eldren, “down on Fourth by
                                                                             Bris- 
 tol, tore 
up”

                   •

   “Ripped,” I’d say later, newly Dogon, calling
them the dead dying of thirst . . . Ripped word-
 skirt, altar cloth, tears enough to drown in.
                                                                       Twin-
     ship, tearing, read it, wept . . . The morning’s
 horn’s hollow so had me I sewed with Crab light,
   “Stitch, rhapsodic stitch,” I apostrophized. So
it was and so it went, blocked-out intaglio back
                                                                           with
     a vengeance, Lone Coast imbroglio south of
 Lone Coast, they who’d only of late fallen in
   with our crew, Robert and Mary’s breakup all 
we knew . . . Not since Peter and Melissa had it
                                                                         been
     so, names less address than echo, insides lost,
 would-be more than were. Names less than nomina-
   tion, they were the kids Huff and Sophia would
                                                                               ’ve 
 had had they had 
kids