I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: Fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

Aqua white, in a glacial vanity cabinet
of pan cake foundation, pure like progeny,

The wind sings the squirrels to sleep
in this acreage of dreams. The lunar reflection

Off the snow shows one how they will die, peaceful
thought broken by a sudden clamor of crunching

One can sense under imagined steps
like the sun on your shoulder one perfect day,

It feels like memories past. An undulation of swift muscle
appears from the void into the moon glow cream,

Moving through the scape like the ocean foaming,
without direction, yet perfectly on path.

Peace not broken, rather fastened by the past,
the present, an no necessary future,

Here in the snow, where squirrels can be caught thinking
and the deer gambol with the timeless winds.