Yes, there is a vault in the ruined castle.
Yes, there is a woman waking beside the
gleaming sword she drew from the stone of childhood:

The King of Denmark wore a yellow star.
French Jews paid for their own with one textile
ration-point: not what Pétainists wore

I walk downhill and lean into the wind.
It is and isn’t the first time. Hour, weather,
errand all proclaim Now and Again.

Forked lightning sears and stabs and stabs again.
The thunderstorm threatening all afternoon,
lowering and dark, has now arrived.

Except it didn't. It went underground
as some diseases have been known to do,
returning with a vengeance in our time.

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,

Sunny May morning; going through the mail.
Among solicitations, one stands out
from summer neighbors: a Conquer-a-thon—

A golden haze—departed souls—
hovers above the summer lawn

The veil between the worlds is growing thin.
The grass is growing tall outside the door.
Who was that baby in the dream again?

I  Midpoint of summer. Horizontal light
   picks out the fly in the dusty web; mousedroppings
   fresh on my desk each morning; poems; letters;