Wherever I look you are islands
a constellation of flowers breathing on the sea
deep-forested islands mountainous and fragrant

invisible beam that wells up and bursts from its
   unknown star on on on never returning

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

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 the water that ran with the days
and runs with them now