We Were Here

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We Were Here


Days flash and fall like sprinkler 

drops, pop like soap bubbles

on the sun-warmed hood of a car. 


Come morning, dead bodies

will line the bottom of a jar

unless we let the lightning out. 


Someone's daughter turns four

tomorrow, and a sparrow cloud graduates 

over the pine copse to leave us 

grasping at the glimmer of what’s

already flickering in further fields. 


I believe some can do it,

the kind of presence where all

stills and the moment

calls eternity its alibi, 


but the closet I've come is this  

sense that I can almost feel

the photograph developing,

and on it the damning evidence

of thumbprints, matching ours.

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