Classic Poem

The coastline
lies in its lace-edge

its rhythms of itself
continuous, familiarizing

contours of geography — pages
from school-lessons, templates

I am busy unlocking
through hours in a plane

and barriers of light
flashed evenly over trees

grown more vivid with absence,
and birds I magnify

like the magpie, ubiquitous,
sitting within its song

as clouds circle, drift.
Everywhere, we are joined by heat:

I drink it, feel new in it,
ponder its sheet-distance from cold

finding myself like a miner
surfacing, clutching at the sky

the weight of sun suddenly
held on his hands.