Forty Years Later (After the Fall of Saigon)

In an idyll away from a home
those memories that have been lain
down in words
rehearsed and repeated
over the years have marked me
tossed waywardly in boats
to eventually find my way Home.

Visiting Merwin

Dew Light

Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age

-from The Moon Before Morning by W.S. Merwin

Smokey's Ashes

Bringing home Smokey's ashes
in a plastic bag
along with an imprint
of his paw
splayed more than I remember
on soft, unbaked clay.

Memento mori
receiving light
from an east-facing window.
What lessons to be learned
day after day?

Losing Smokey

My little wayfarer
you are released
from all that is not you
going now
to where I can
no longer hold you
my little one
I hope you can hear me.

In the Wake of Finishing Proust

They finally came
the last words
which happened to be
on the meditation of Time.
I repeated the lines
not wanting to leave
this palpitating world.

It is a loss
not so much of the characters
wrought by a wonderfully deft hand
but of a world
made intelligible
by becoming my own.