Andrew Wells
​

"and the wave,"

its ornothological regret, instinctively
out of tune, knew to distinguish crane,
heron, egret, by all black-leggedness and ancestral warmth. I
think about touch and the love-languages a river cannot send labouring,
for its cry is a cut of the silt and our freckle

of sand appearing beside it is washed with reflections of
canary grass in
what is the colour’s recommended berth;
no marsh grass and there’s no
hollowing with which to hold our bodies steady for longer

in air which held
all turn the short wave’s breadth, cresting low as yesterday’s sun;
whoever heard herons through
whole shades in towns, not me; deliberated sadnesses,
frightened and pink, fewer rabbits oxidise landscapes

I am done misreading, distance’s volume becomes to you the sea-shell I hold out.

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Andrew Wells is the author of two chapbooks, *SEALED* (Hesterglock, 2020) and *Menacing Sense* (Osmanthus, 2021) and a co-editor of HVTN Press. His work has appeared in SAND Journal, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, Amberflora, The Scores, Fanzine, and others. He is an MFA candidate at Columbia University.