Memory

The aquamarine- or turquoise-colored rock that,
as a child, you picked up and pocketed and kept
tucked away: no longer there. You can check;
your fingers will encounter nothing
except the nothing you don’t expect.

Not the nothing-special bit of brick you chipped
off the old broken-down wall back home, or
that accepted-offering shard of sea glass,
or even any of the indistinct pebbles that did
or did not sometimes wake sleeping windows.

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Order

Remember that night on that beach when you leaned closer to me and
whispered, I can draw perfect circles (but only in the sand)
and then you stood to enclose my lying body in just a one?
I was delighted. I always took you at your word, remember?

Me, I was your other shaky hand. From what remains
of my memory, I can only draw a crooked but unbroken
series of accidents: a motel-room conception, an ugly-duckling adolescence
(but at least I was smart), meeting you in university,

growing up and apart and me powerless against the drift and the pull
into an endless succession of lovers and jobs, one after the other bringing me
inevitably here. Sometimes you would send me letters, remember,
in your meticulous handwriting all about your meticulous exploits

in your rarefied, ivory-tower air, and if you didn't know I loved every bit of it,
even though I was lucky to understand every other word. Many times I tried
to write you back, but the husband or the kids or the boss or the dog, well,
I was sure you didn't want to hear about it. So you never did.

But on this bright night with its perfect-circle moon, I'm in a looking-back mood.
I remember your coffee smell, and the slight trembling of your arms when
you would tell me about the latest tiny bit of order you've found and brought
into the world.

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