I guess like losing anything, I thought
it was coming back at first. And then days
crowded round with nowhere else to go—

but I’m afraid they’d wet the page, and you might think
     them tears.

(All night, from inside, fruit fall sounds like footfall.)

The cows drink with ease. The cows think, if they think,
There isn’t enough ship here to build a barn.

Although no fire consumes us, we burn with what
Only the fire of doing can put out

Cutting the key with which you might unlock
The chambers of the heart of any word—

Hope? Despair? the head and tail of the same old
   Counterfeit quarter.

Eighteen years ago my cousin Arthur
   died alone in a hotel
         in Perugia,

Of dedication, a child’s
need to complete his chosen
role before the snows came down

Miles of white, palest skin,
and the slash of the road through it. Who named this lake,