She lives on the verge
of a wood where the shy deer stand in
raining glades, and sunken trees
unroll knotted shadows in the long
hour of the ******* sunset.

Her face is in my yearbook,
so serious, in the first row
of the literary club group picture.

I'm in the third row
looking stupidly away
from the camera,
missing the moment -
could that boy in the photo
call out over twenty years and say
"The fists of rain, the speckled deer,
the branching, shaded fog peeling
away as the dogs run in the morning -
these things are yours, yours, yours"?