they rinsed us from you & we came to
beneath harvest of smoke & our tools
of part memory, part dream & the dead
where they slept beneath our quilts
the peat bog will not forget, so holds
a dropped awl & still-opened hand
of at least one distant ancestor
having never met
dream leaves its memory
on the raw side of hide
& we gathered foxglove
at eventide from hills that bore
its crash, folding fields
to stitch a robe for moons
to outlast where we held the flood
until it remembered us
by settling remains in the moss
of that moor
where only the listening
from here on out is left & now
the feathered chest-dweller
coughs beneath the ribbed rafters
& we wait with low hum of estuarine mud
in our mouths
where round howls
too sharp to keep where
she gathers them
& us
still holding
that flood
by ripple marks in stone
her song remembers
the weight of our collected
bones to whisper back
o water,
where did your flood
last end?