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I send photos to

you of the Bay in Autumn,

the doubled clouds. You

say, how sad the light.

To go with it I send a

poem. It leaves you cold.

Heard across the Bay:

the distant roar of salt poured

into a ship’s hold.

My life is islands.

I sip tea in the warm Rhode

Island Fall. I can’t

even imagine

the God Who once filled my time.

What is holds me fast.

Wind and rain off the

Bay turned my umbrella in-

side out. It was wild.

So I went home, dried

off, and made tea. Then other-

worldly insights flowed.

You again, old swan,

your feet in the mud under

the pier, you whiter

than the Autumn sun,

than the dying year. Tonight,

we drink Hibiki.

There are depths on sun-

ny days, too. Awake to your

idiot self, in-

ner duck, and float on

shining cloud surfaces. No

one need know but you.

Yet another day,

yet another cup of tea

as the traffic dies.

I turn on the lights

as I put away the things,

and in the quiet

feel the shock thinkers

talk about. It is stunning

that it is at all.

Another holi-

day without you, another

walk to the cove. But

a Canadian

goose, also out for a walk,

also overdressed,

and out of its el-

ement, though when it stepped a-

side, I could go on.

Too cold for a walk

really but the ducks paddled

away chatting —a

family outing.

Feet numb, ears freezing, I stood

there smelling the first

pie you baked for me

that summer in Providence.

You knew your apples.

I look down the road.

The houses look smaller with-

out the pinks and greens

of their small gardens,

smaller and less well-cared for,

less significant.

The only beauty

left to observe on my walk

is the play of light.

It happens with each

step I take, as various

as love to the saints.

Where fresh and salt mix,

rain in my face, wind in my

ears, I seek myself.

I didn’t come out

here to see it but to feel

what it feels—the swan.

In the dark chop, the

swan looks past its image to

what it knows below.