>> Americans pride themselves so much on objectivity and yet caring deeply
for someone else is so very subjective.
I think that sometimes it's only through time and distance that we can arrive at any kind
of knowledge about another person.
And this next poem is written with a great deal of time and distance.
It's called To Keep.
Years later, I turn you in my hand like a shell,
run my fingers over in crustaceans, over smooth, fluted edges.
Like a piece of gnarled wood, I carry home to comprehend your fears,
your darkness swirl in the brown ridges.
A dried flower, fragile but constant, keeping its color, symmetry, sweetness.
Here with a neighbor, a face out of brown leaves beside her rake.
In a crowd, at a party, a hair color, a [? height ?], slowed, stilled,
quenched, can know you, can say I loved.