You will come out of me, you know, then.
The years of hovering around you, I hope
benignly, afraid that you will learn my fear,

They rise up so beautifully some nights,
opening like a bright fan of pain—
and what is left of her voice is a darkness

What follows me has found me,
here, in my own house.

Did you love her? I thought about her
continuously for a year. There were whole hours
there was nothing too thin about her look, her voice.

As a kid I never thought of “pain” as
  something I felt. What I felt I could not
name or share. Now out the window I watch

In Ohio, the untried earth lifts
To coax pale horses from the edge of a wet, blue field.
White apple blossoms are unhurried

That road
got no people.
That road.

for dinner, vacation, carnality,
I took up an ancient text on military strategy
hoping to find the miracle subterfuge,

One Easter, the last chords of our closing hymn
still buzzing in the upright strings of the Hope Church School
piano, our black-robed pastor, fresh from his sermon,

The streetlights bent
the sleet streams as I went
up the deserted Rue des Deux Ponts,