I write your name for the last time in this mist, White breath on the windowpane, And watch it vanish. No, it stays there. - Charles Wright

Snub end of a dismal year,
deep in the dwarf orchard,
The sky with its undercoat of blackwash and point stars,
I stand in the dark and answer to
My life, this shirt I want to take off,
which is on fire . . .

We've all led raucous lives,
some of them inside, some of them out.
But only the poem you leave behind is what's important.
Everyone knows this.

How many years have slipped through our hands? At least as many as the constellations we still can identify. The quarter moon, like a light skiff, floats out of the mist-remnants Of last night’s hard rain. It, too, will slip through our fingers with no ripple, without us in it.