I smiled this morning when I read
the words you'd plucked from Rilke's garden,
brushed sugar and selfishness aside
and placed them in my finest vase
slightly left of center on the kitchen mantle.

I'm inside out today, a small fish uneasy
in the muffle of watered down silence.
I can ignore the phone, the church bell,
the neighbor's dog barking in the street,
everything but a heckle that whispers
in two languages, "Yo la deseo aquí.".

So I slip on the woolly itch of an oversized
red coat that warms me to the palms
of a second life, escaping to the seawall
where we rested the car on the late
October afternoon when we chased
that rainbow from Ayer to Portsmouth,
where you introduced me to the virtues
of Tripoli's pizza and the tide that
would carry me to the New World.

It was never a thought to deny you
the waves of the asphalt between here
and Jerusalem. Oliver told me you had
to go.

I simply couldn't stand one more goodbye.