Maybe whimsy can be meaningful, too.

I spoke and the home quaked, a shiver enough for ages of dust to flutter and settle again, like "a great tide had washed in and washed out again." A grave cracks a fissure. I eat dinner as I do, every night, and a seed widens, my hands grow older in yours. The home I know is standing, still, now. A vine may be growing through the shutters. Nothing finer than the slip of tongue against tooth, nautical dreams, maritime romance, great white whales witnessing.

Where the plainest scheme is a raven in his distal nest, at nine thousand feet, five states in view and billions of humans, grappling, some sleeping in the juniper's shade, some working in the hot steam. She lines a room with lace and linen, she photographs dusk and cats, she cooks, her myriad of gentlemen button their shirts to meet her, Alexander too. They will remember that spot of rooftop, the headlands, those longest evenings casting light on letters, the ceaseless longing for woods, and in the woods for a different wood, and on one coast for the other, always.

These strings refuse to tie, the twine loose and willowy. My Alexander is a mythic character, and he has never said a foul word to anybody. My Alexander tells me to go to sleep and speaks of my grandfather softly until I finally do.