At the moment
when all I knew was turned
into a dragon
and I fell hopeless
in the field of thorns
I felt as if I was an Italian mother
waving goodbye to her eldest son,
or that woman who mailed letters for seventeen years
to "the boy with the leather jacket".

What could I say?
To think of all these years
leading up to a few
brief, compact moments.
To think of the moments
like small cherry blossoms
fallen into a small pool of water
left as soggy drifters
clinging to one and other.

It was an awful sadness
him leaving me-
two images floated into
my line of focus:
Rodin's statue, The Kiss;
and that amazing end of a book
when the boy
with the brown leather jacket

did show up,
with those bags filled
with the letters
and announced that he
had arrived.

I might admit
that I have dreamed of this moment,
and thought that I would
climb in my car
puff a cigarette
with red, silly lips
and drive off with my hair
flying all over the place.

But no one could see themselves clearly
turning into one of those fossil collections
balanced on strings
with the small square blocks
saying this was a dinosaur
once long ago.