As for the lily, who knows
if what we face isn’t the laughter

of one who went while the time seemed green
for going, or a voice

one room ahead of our own dreaming, and we die
at the crest of each day’s spending

away. As prow and the surrendered foam
go on forgetting, our very looking is the light

feasting on the light. As for hunger,
each must cross to a body as yet unnamed.

Who needs a heart unless it’s one we share
with a many-windowed sea? A heart,

and not the dark it moves through, not the waves  
it births, but, visited by blood, unoccupied,             

is the very wheel installing day, the well
from which paired hands set out, happy
and undress a terrifying and abundant yes.