Once, view to that span of rust struck silhouette
of future. Remember: twin timber-
men – ghosts in dungarees, mouths hidden
yet presumed expressionless beneath beards,
unruly as undergrowth, that single image
of shared destiny manifesting
itself upon the landscape,
pulping fear into paper.
Something I don’t know
is how to hold a past larger than the one
I asked for. What hovers somewhere
beyond vision, while still bordering
my form, resisting the constraint
of association. Undream, and
I’m in the red-
wood grove with him again, where that plaque’s
acrylic finish frames the historic photograph,
forgets its subjects’ names. The starved arms
muscling tense against sepia
shirtsleeves: struggle carrying some cross-
section of the cedar felled on the spot
we’re standing. Bigger than his apartment
across the bay. Flash that lacquered
two figures out of death
into the bright disc of the world.