Rain on my face like a cold shroud

under a blank springtime sky,

mirrored in the floodwaters rising

from pavement and the city’s lights

are distant stars.

I am dying without drowning,

and these waters flow not

over street and concrete

but brittle grass and living rock,

down to the sea.

The distant stars

are a lighthouse

or a beacon

or fireflies

or the city lights reflected on the fog

that drifts like torn gauze across the scar

of old glaciers long gone which cut here to the chalk.

I cannot tell if this path falls

or ascends and the journey is

maddening, cutting my wrists

and feet on exposed stone

where I will not risk my fingers.

In the caverns under the island

or on the up-heaved promontory

I found unburied dead and forgotten mementos;

confetti of torn pages spiraling into the void

I do not fly.