Coral curled around coral, a cork-
screw broken from what holds,

from where it is held, broken from
water, lifted from salt, washed up

to a ledge on a ridge in the center
of a mass of land where traces

of water are traced on rocks
arranged on the banks— carved

coins with a skeletal value.
Memory holds everything

together. In a shattering,
memory holds. A bony

structure becomes one
built from many into a wall

of coral. Coral, a color,
adorns the neck of a child

standing covered in sand,
the meaning being to stand

at the edge of being and reach
beyond standing, into the past,

past being ocean, or a future
of river and land. Memory pulls

our bone-torn forms, our mortal
coils, out of the ocean and onto

its edge. Land pushed ocean
into river, a river over which

we skip the water-marked stones
that forever collect on its edge.