It's been two years, one of grief and sort of inarticulate rage that

I saw as being something I could say. The first was the breakdown,

the second of talking. I'm at my best I know when I have something to praise,

The leafless trees, the treeless leaves, the wind that animates them both

Is my great secret and I sometimes think the source of the mystery at my core

That still allows me friends.

A year and a half, I've had the same

Phone number, reality, non-redeeming guilt and redeeming sense of self.

I don't have the same friends, or same craving to love and be loved beyond

Those trees, that sky, these keys I know. I've forgotten the best lines

In writing back to students, but can picture students in my head

And think of how I know them now. Better with names, worse with faces,

I met some people whom I ought to know

And then forgot.