Long after Ovid’s story of Philomela
   has gone out of fashion and after the testimonials
of Hafiz and Keats have been smothered in comment

You were always a stray and grating
Stiff-necked lot, I am sure of it; graceless,
And nothing loose about your hands.

I remember how I would say, “I will gather 
These pieces together, 
Any minute now I will make 

A sentence continues after thirty years
it wakes in the silence of the same room
the words that come to it after the long comma

Turning climbing slowly in late spring among
black trunks of high pines
talking of our lives few white words flying

With the birds I suppose there is
small comparison no holding
up of what may be remembered

There is an archipelago rising
Out of the green waters that, rippling
And swaying, are the oak tree’s shadow

We walked on it, in the very flesh
No different only colder, as was
The sea itself. It was simple as that.

Not every kind of water will do
to make the pool under the rock face
that afterward will be clear forever

I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall 
Like a calendar in one color. 
I wear a torn place on my sleeve.