from “Dissolve” [A field that shivered with a thousand cranes]

A field that shivered with a thousand cranes
                        evaporates in someone else’s backyard.

Gills sliced into the mountain’s crest          resins hourly.

Televised vapor muzzles a hummingbird’s gassed lungs.

A cliff line wavers
                                    under a table’s August.

Shears jangle in the corral’s black-and-white photograph.

In the trailer’s hallway: the night’s unveiled ankles.

Rented from a shepherd of doves
          we return          replenished with categories.

We are husbands to razed hillsides; wives to drowned bridges.

When interred in plexiglass: our origin salinated.

From Dissolve. Copyright © 2018 by Sherwin Bitsui. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.