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Even the gun shows are gone now, even the scrapyards, the darkest, farthest barns. The strip mall half empty since my elementary years abides only chemicals now, the lot sequestered behind fences, its metal tanks checked each September for leaks in the seals. I lost my virginity in a basement here, lost my balance on a backhoe, had to pick the gravel out of my knees. For the prom, my date was the tank man just vaporized in the heat storm, his data screen open to augmented porn. This morning in my Honda pedi-plane, I flew over where we used to sled, old hills oranged now for warning, only the edges still brown. I saw a denier sitting outside in a lawn chair, her hair so long it met the ground. There’s no idling in the skyways now, which is why I can’t tell you if she was dying.

Along the grave green downs, this idle afternoon, Shadows of loitering silver clouds, becalmed in blue, Bring, like unfoldment of a flower, the best of June. Shadows outspread in spacious movement, always you Have dappled the downs and valleys at this time of year, While larks, ascending shrill, praised freedom as they flew. Now, through that song, a fighter-squadron’s drone I hear From Scratchbury Camp, whose turfed and cowslip’d rampart seems More hill than history, ageless and oblivion-blurred. I walk the fosse, once manned by bronze and flint-head spear; On war’s imperious wing the shafted sun-ray gleams: One with the warm sweet air of summer stoops the bird. Cloud shadows, drifting slow like heedless daylight dreams, Dwell and dissolve; uncircumstanced they pause and pass. I watch them go. My horse, contented, crops the grass.

“Are they real?” We have pages of kitchen utensils and books and candlesticks and nibs, but the charcoal pencil and new sketchpad are squat as aubergines in her hands in front of this display. With bad weather forecast and light silting up in cramped windows, we are the only visitors. The year settles in a corner of the room, has removed its white gloves, tip by tip, and set to one side its summer purse of bibelots and sheen. Half-term of her final year, we are sightseers intent on moors. In the morning, her windcheater and red wellies will bestow the dust of summer festivals upon sullen, wind-soaked sheep. We will park, and walk ourselves into the final, cutting rain between pages of her favorite book. She wants to go all the way to Top Withens, or the house they say must have been Top Withens, given its loneliness and set. But now is artifacts and souvenirs: a perfume with too much musk in it, a jar of damson jam which we probably won’t open until past its sell-by date. We are buying the word “damson.” And we are buying time. “Are they real?” she asks me, and I watch her reckon the distance between what should and should never be seen. We have fallen short. She draws, and what she draws is rain falling slant inside the bedroom; the bed as a box of leaves and stones and, within the display case, she hangs from the clothes rail, little moons. On the mannequin, water lilies stand in for morning dress, and the backdrop is marbled in what looks to me like veins and arteries. But when I flick through the sketchpad in the B&B, all the pages, what is left of them, are clean. Next day, she leaves it in the car. When she moves away, she will leave it again, a sketchpad with no name on it and only the faintest traces of where she made skies of darned linen, and unfastened every stitch.

Most people would rather not, but I indulge, every few weeks, the thought of it. Sometimes the oily smell of an evening flower appears and hangs in the air, a slightly browner spot. I think most people had it wrong when they said forget about it and find a fresh patch of  grass to lie down in. There are prayers, though, about that kind of peace. I have to admit, sometimes I want nothing more than to be lying on the bottom of an unimpressive river. I can watch all the leaves and sticks skim over my head, and no one will bother me because they’re swimming in the more impressive rivers. The water’s not too cold. It doesn’t feel like being dead. It also doesn’t feel like being old or fetal. I came to the humble water to lie down. I did what I set out to do. Now I don’t have to tell you anything more about it.

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes To pace the ground, if path be there or none, While a fair region round the traveller lies Which he forbears again to look upon; Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, The work of Fancy, or some happy tone Of meditation, slipping in between The beauty coming and the beauty gone. If Thought and Love desert us, from that day Let us break off all commerce with the Muse: With Thought and Love companions of our way, Whate'er the senses take or may refuse, The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews Of inspiration on the humblest lay.

I “At odds again,” hands moving out of the shadows. And now, now everything seems definite, discrete, fingers webbed with sunlight the tree lets through, arms still in their own time, circling, catch up, catch hold at the wrists, like cell chains in a watchcrystal completing themselves. Together again. Shoulders, torso, each one of us one, once more. It is hard to imagine minutes just past. II “At odds again,” hands moving against the wind like loose flapping things, washcloths, words long frayed with careless use. You wanted to say it was beginning to bother you, beginning to wish, wondering if thought in broken light could ever touch itself, reassemble itself. The King, our promise, broken, the sword we imagined gone, hovers like leafmold in the light. Say it, then, the stain of things remains. III “At odds again,” elbow cupped into wet leaves. After love, there are moments of clutter, and no amount of practice will teach you to regard them as anything more than what you lean against catching its buried chill. Keep your fancy to yourself; facts do not fade but are momentarily obscured, the work of hands, touch and its out- come, the absence of touch, and distance, the inevitable space between, shapes all our limitations. IV “At odds again,” knee raised slightly, sunlight and shade, patchwork coverlet. Bits and pieces, the story of each thing connected, end to end, this instant extended in every direction. Not a thing in space or things in spaces or spaces between what space seems occupied for this moment, the next. We are not snowstorms of ourselves, spindrift and curl. The whorl of action is a template in time: the casual shifting of leaves, hands moving, the certain flex of possibility.

Child You've boarded me over like a window or a well. Mother It was autumn I couldn't hear the students only the music coming in the window, Se tu m’ami If you love me

The mother says, I am afraid. The daughter says, I am afraid. The mother says, My feet are cold. The daughter says, My feet are cold. The mother says, The car is sinking. The daughter says Yes, the car is sinking. The mother says, The water is heavy, and the daughter says, The water is very heavy. The mother says, I am too young for this. The daughter says, I want to grow old. The mother says, I can see the sky, and the daughter says, I can also see the sky. How about the moon, the mother says, and the daughter says, I can see the moon. What else hurts you, the mother says and the daughter says, What about you. I forgot to tell your father something, the mother says and the daughter says, I forgot to tell my father something. The mother says, I do not want to die. I do not want to die, the daughter says. I wanted to be a good mother, the mother says. Sometimes you weren’t, the daughter says. Sometimes you weren’t a good daughter either, the mother says and the daughter says, I wanted to be good. I can hear my heart, she says. I can hear my heart, she says. I wish I loved Jesus, she says and she says, I wish I loved Jesus. She says, The thud is unbearable. She says, The thud is unbearable. What do you mean you wish you loved Jesus, she says and she says, The water is dark. My clothes are getting heavier, she says. Heavier, she says, and heavier. She says, The water is up to my chin now, and she says, It is up to my chin too. What if this is the last thing I say to you, she says and she says, What if this is the last thing I say to you. She says, I cannot hold on much longer. Please, she says, hold on longer. The water is at my mouth, she says, and she says, Even if it is at your mouth.

I. Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east, And one of them shot in the west by the sea. Dead ! both my boys ! When you sit at the feast And are wanting a great song for Italy free, Let none look at me ! II. Yet I was a poetess only last year, And good at my art, for a woman, men said ; But this woman, this , who is agonized here, — The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head For ever instead. III. What art can a woman be good at ? Oh, vain ! What art is she good at, but hurting her breast With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain ? Ah boys, how you hurt ! you were strong as you pressed, And I proud, by that test. IV. What art's for a woman ? To hold on her knees Both darlings ! to feel all their arms round her throat, Cling, strangle a little ! to sew by degrees And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat ; To dream and to doat. V. To teach them ... It stings there ! I made them indeed Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt, That a country's a thing men should die for at need. I prated of liberty, rights, and about The tyrant cast out. VI. And when their eyes flashed ... O my beautiful eyes ! ... I exulted ; nay, let them go forth at the wheels Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise When one sits quite alone ! Then one weeps, then one kneels ! God, how the house feels ! VII. At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled With my kisses, — of camp-life and glory, and how They both loved me ; and, soon coming home to be spoiled In return would fan off every fly from my brow With their green laurel-bough. VIII. Then was triumph at Turin : Ancona was free !' And some one came out of the cheers in the street, With a face pale as stone, to say something to me. My Guido was dead ! I fell down at his feet, While they cheered in the street. IX. I bore it ; friends soothed me ; my grief looked sublime As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained To the height he had gained. X. And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong, Writ now but in one hand, I was not to faint, — One loved me for two — would be with me ere long : And Viva l' Italia ! — he died for, our saint, Who forbids our complaint." XI. My Nanni would add, he was safe, and aware Of a presence that turned off the balls, — was imprest It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear, And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossessed, To live on for the rest." XII. On which, without pause, up the telegraph line Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta : — Shot . Tell his mother. Ah, ah, his, ' their ' mother, — not mine, ' No voice says " My mother" again to me. What ! You think Guido forgot ? XIII. Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven, They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe ? I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven Through THAT Love and Sorrow which reconciled so The Above and Below. XIV. O Christ of the five wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of Thy mother ! consider, I pray, How we common mothers stand desolate, mark, Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away, And no last word to say ! XV. Both boys dead ? but that's out of nature. We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. 'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall ; And, when Italy 's made, for what end is it done If we have not a son ? XVI. Ah, ah, ah ! when Gaeta's taken, what then ? When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men ? When the guns of Cavalli with final retort Have cut the game short ? XVII. When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee, When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red, When you have your country from mountain to sea, When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, (And I have my Dead) — XVIII. What then ? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low, And burn your lights faintly ! My country is there , Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow : My Italy 's THERE, with my brave civic Pair, To disfranchise despair ! XIX. Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength, And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn ; But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length Into wail such as this — and we sit on forlorn When the man-child is born. XX. Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east, And one of them shot in the west by the sea. Both ! both my boys ! If in keeping the feast You want a great song for your Italy free, Let none look at me !

There are days I don’t think about the sea; weeks wash by in fact, then a shearwater—or some such—flutters by on the salt flats fanning out in my mind’s eye, reflected there, a shimmering reverie, recalling the pact I once made (and renew today) to hold to a higher altitude. But note the difference between this bird and me: a slight disruption or harsh word and I crash, folded seaward, letting cold life intrude; whereas the petrel, mindless of such height, scales each watery hill that rises up, adapting to the shape of each impediment, each low escape instinct in it, the scope of its flight fitted to its will.