Candi V. Auchterlonie-

Ghost Hands

I faltered at the ledge 

searching for the words
  

a map of how 

to follow or lead
  

the pages spilled over 

felt as though it was never endingly
  

white over white, the shades of it grew impossibly light, 

sheet by sheet
  

pinioned wings, angels 

in gulls
  

relativity,
  

the spilled honey milk of feathers 

of that pouring, letting down,
  

foreign, 

made even more foreign.
  

the squid ink furls like smoke 

the ought to have said words 

stinging the hived breast.
  

luggage lost, silk and pearls, 

gold bars,
  

wealth sinking under the salt  

weight of this pacific blue,
  

more,

 meaning to be 

herring bone 

sharp
  

the man under the sea 

so thoughtfully
  

writing the world above at a desk 

some wreckage, stone dead, no,
  

he wasn't,  

only dormant.
  

Some lodestone, polarity 

collecting
  

to the eyes of him 

the metal of her.
  

nightmares, ghost hands 

hers,
  

are-  

mannequin dislocation
 require re-assembly, the digits do.

 type written love poems about april  

and death's blossoms fill the velvet green air
  

above the suspension 

of air over ocean,
  

impressing pregnancies, along the hills, some turn to stillborn 

grief, amber light over ashes, and yet from this, still comes some life 

some joy..
  

They wonder what it is like 

to touch that red, watch it leave 

where it left, sticky bittersweet, the love, the longing-
  

as the invisible ink does go, from the pages 

unwrought
  

flittering freely over that ledge 

this surely is all the pulped tree ever hoped for
  

in all those rings of unrippled stillness,  

a sea to carry it out a while...

 

...Startle the idle sway
 

some verve to kick again.
  

What waking awaits this? 

Was it just a dream all along...
  

Before the ledge.
  

Not under, not over, not in nor out 

still there, we're still there, impossibly 

delicately, still.