A keening culprit, I came unzipped,
unwed. My penance, to be province, to lie
across a millstone bed, ground to powder,
to be wife again. And you, my conspirator,
my paramour, you strapped your longing
to a sail, sent from town, sent to be lost.
But trilobites cluster beneath your feet
on mountaintop that was once ocean floor
and our crime is a revelation that awaits
the murmur of sonar to be found. Beloved,
off the Chalumna River, a coelacanth was pulled
into a fishing boat. Returned from Cretaceous,
returned ugly and spined, but insisting on itself.