Growing Old and Living Apart
One of the games we had
was to reach down from the bed
and pluck fuzz which was fish
from the rug which was sea
and cook it on a quilt patch
to survive the fact of our drifting,
the hard roll-and-pitch
or the calm and windless lifting
of an ocean which,
imagined or no,
had all the qualities of distance
and time and flow.
The difference
is only that now we must try a little harder
to imagine ourselves together,
lost to the same unfamiliar water.
The Red Wheelbarrow No. 14