Or twenty, or today
watching this cascading,
these smooth stones
and singing: do you remember
the tree by the river
when we were seventeen.
To keep this stirring,
to hold this flowing and these
limbs stretching up and up
in glass jars on the sill
catching morning and basking
until we submerge again.
I swam with a lobsterman
once, and the next morning
we watched a Luna moth die
slowly against the granite.
He said: Well, what isn’t ephemeral
and I said: You spend
too much time at sea
to ask me that.
Then, him:
Don’t try to tell me that even the ocean,
yawning and heavy as night,
doesn’t recall pushing past aspen roots
as a puttering stream
and wishing to stay.