Crossing the Archipelago

Rising in November in these days of dusk
I am one life older, watching now as the walls
green over, the stones break into bud;
if this is ebb-tide turned to flood it means that
nightfall might begin again at dawn.
And so it does. The sea at Djurgården is a mirror
of lost light. I watch snowflakes fall on water,
transparent as tissue, melting back to nothing,
the black water’s endless echo of the night.
A diminished life turns turtle and the day breaks
like a spell; to double back on this, through
ash and silver birch, to that extinguished past, a world
that’s over, will wreck me. Hopeless to return
now: my future lit by bridges, and their burning.