Pier Pressure

for Lewis MacAdams

All the hours spent watching
pavement turn to sand
& the lights at Echo Beach
burning out one by one
to find yourself tweaking
in a dry bone arroyo
at half-past doom
wearing a pair of elevator shoes
not sure but that cement
clouds don’t crumble

& the wind it sounds like

as seaflowers rake the sky

the mileage & the desecration
of that compromised velocity

a scratched-out name
in the Book of Hearts