_26. A Picnic (2)

Daylight is the poultice for the solitary heart.
Rivers become the natural architect of your sorrow,
when on their banks you picnic alone,
winking ghosts and rosebushes your only companions
save the fisherman plying the aquatic organ’s waterways.
He pulls your sighs from the river’s ink
and tosses their silvery, twitching shapes
into his ice chest.
He will disappear with the light,
evaporated back into the water that would take you, too,
if you would embrace its silences.
But you will not. You will pack your tea set
and your singular ecstasy into a basket
and retreat from the banks of oblivion,
light electric lamps to cast away
the gauzy reflections of memories on the water.
You will hang a lantern in your chest to banish shadows
and sleep as only the living do,
alone.