You prayed to your gods

but they did not come.

Excepting every totem that

landed like a bullet

deep in flesh to be recovered.

Slabs of overpainted shoreline

on a fluctuating screen

my life lying next to yours

in the glow from a televised phonebooth

gone far down the channel

of these blinking years

in color to be commanded

from the stem where we fade out

far from our source.

At the cusp of the last waterfall

I hold a decorated rock

lettered with doctored moss

by a western knife

for your oriental pause

and your braids of light.