THE PASSING

After what had gone before 
was gone, it was afternoon, 
deep spring, and the distances: 
finding a way to look at 
the sky painted above the 
trees.  Redrawn, the acanthus, 
heavy scent of the drying 

leaves.  There had been that rain that 
doesn’t change the shapes of things 
but the after, fractured clouds, 
the lines of birds rising where 
the path had been between you.  
What you thought of was the way 
he touched your elbow, the rough 

place you never see.  Then dark 
leaving dusk behind and, where 
something had been, nothing but 
the path hard from passing yet 
never done, and the trees, long 
necked, searching where nothing was, 
though nothing was everywhere.

THE GARDENER 

Our new souls crackle in the 
wind that runs the banked flats of 
our father’s garden; so long 
as there are days, dawn arrives 
in the deep grass, unlocks the 
horizons: stiff garment of
the material world.  Our 
father broadcasts bone meal on 
the rose beds, straightens to read 
the light, and his broadleaf hands, 

the big digging thumbs.  Every 
spring, as long as there are springs, 
he rises, grabbles for the 
ladder treads, sun climbing the 
lined clouds behind him, to clear 
the guttering in his clean 
gloves, scoop dead oak, yellowed elm,  
inky beech dung, because he 
loves what’s pure and hates stinking 
things.  He checks his Timex, high 

afternoon leaves flecking the 
elastic sky; he’ll break down 
backyard clods; now he’s waving 
to us through the lightness.  Or 
signaling to us that he’s 
fallen on his pitchfork.  At 
the window, our mother mouths 
a word—jackass—to the late 
air, which is gray and moist, mild   
as the soft ash of childhood.

UNTIL SUNRISE

The past is whatever has 
passed, and sometimes unsounded; 
time’s only its horizon: 
what’s unheard is everywhere.
Today’s sun hung windless, the 
stopped sky, and the prosody 
of the water, finish on 

water of the light true in 
its ending: at the cry of
dusk, I remembered you.  The 
tide reached for what might have been 
but would never be, which is 
the longest sentence in the 
language of the night, and the 

sky floated on the hill of  
water, the stars inside, yet 
time is water, which moves to 
be true; the moon lay naked 
across waters that might not 
have been but were, without which 
who could live until sunrise.