How does a poet leave this world?
Does she quietly lay down her pen,
Tidy her desk, stack the sheafs of paper,
Turn off her lamp and say

Goodbye to her dreams and conceits,
To morning walks along the salt marshes,
Keeping company with herons
        and wild geese,

Where
        she entered her church in the woods
And emerged with poems of the ineffable,
Told through the perfection of fox and rabbit
And dawn's shimmer-mist just above the water;
Told through the unabashed mystery of life --

What the poet put down is now relinquished.
Yet it is her heart
Her heart still
That beats in every line --