In Northern Michigan

Dream if you want for me to carry on

If you could break it all down for me

I could believe you

Dream if you want for me to carry on

If you could break it all down for me

I remember

You and I in northern Michigan

The color in between the leaves

Black tourmaline, blue-green

Like some bioluminescent thing

Come up from the black of the sea

The purl of the breeze

Whispering

I remember

How you stood at the water's edge

While I was at the line of the trees

And you waded out patiently down

Ever-darkening your step

The shadows grew around your feet

Your ankles and knees

I remember trembling

Nights you tunneled inward

Anxious unto panic

I was that watcher on the ridge

Standing on the dune edge faced west

And the night sloped down before me

Like a challenge from myth

But I never moved an inch

Backlit by the campfire blazing

Heaving in a harsh spring wind

Sparks thrown into the low branches to fade

While you floated into water like a ghost ship

Sinking

Days we breezed through everything

Laughed through whole mornings at home

And out warm nights running from sleep

Days like good dreams always familiar, surreal

The sun in the trees bleeds marigold and wine

Life

All of its languages here

Love spoke in tongues

Loudly or hushed

Too much of you at once is just enough at all times

My life in the light of you

I remember everything

Dream if you want for me to carry on

You could be like a body in the sea

You could go slowly sink on into nothingness

Or you could float like a lantern in a breeze

You could freeze out of focus on a movie screen

Film careening from the reel

Or you could stay for an ovation

When the credits roll

Focused face right in the center of the frame

You never know

I heard the sound of my feet

Before I felt them pound sand

I heard only my own hard heartbeat in my head

There was no sound

I saw the water to your knees

Then to your neck

Above your head

I swore you'd drowned

I watched you swim out

I only watched you wade in and panicked when I lost you

Sprinting now downward to find you back

As if you even needed me or asked

Worry always myself too much for your old sadness

Worry until I panic

Tumble to the open shoreline

Kept running toward water alone

The waves against my chest deafening

Or only your soft laughter in me