The Poet on sediment is the only rock that remembers

what the current cannot say is anything twice it goes and goes and going is its whole vocabulary it lifts the boulder the way desire lifts a name never once writing it down because writing is a kind of stopping and stopping is the only death a river knows how to die so it dies of nothing remembers nothing it is perfect it is spring it is your twenties it is gone

II.

Then the slowing. Then the sorting.

Boulders first — the griefs too heavy to carry past the bend. Then gravel: quarrels, addresses, the winter of phone calls. Then sand, which was a decade. Then silt, which was a face. Then clay, fine as almost-still water, which is what tenderness becomes when it finally lies down.

Read me here. This is the only floor of the house with the lights on. Whatever I leaned on fell out of me in order. I am not what crossed me; I am where it dropped.

III.

The dent has a basement.

Below this, pressure. Below this the shells forget the sea that ground them and come up marble — a beach that will not testify. Hold it to your ear: no ocean. Weight. It means everything. It has stopped telling.

—

So: settle enough to layer. Not so deep the layers weld. Love at a speed that drops its freight where morning can find it. Keep one seam of clay wet, one stratum uncooked, in case someone comes who wants to read you —

and not just carry you in a pocket, like a stone that works and cannot say what for.