Orthodox Cemetery at Fort Ross

Climbing the fence to your cemetery
I scratched my wrist, a wound you salved with spit.
It was not yours, of course, just Russian,

a patch of thistle slant over the cold sea
coursing like a river whose floe has cracked.

High up ospreys hung in the stiff gusts where
fifty souls hovered in a chill limbo.
You laid wild flowers before their crosses
before we made love among the thorns and spines,

desire standing steady in the gush of time.