In the bright morning

sun of this other life

three swans lift with your delight

into the cool air above Sachem Pond.

Here, even your eyes have wings

and the sea behind you echoes

their thunderous thrum.

A gull pulls its shadow

across great rocks balanced

between the days, monuments

to the moment, poised

like the heron posed at pond’s edge.

At your feet, a constellation of stones

settles into the earthen sky.

Even now you know—you hope—

one day you’ll remember

this water, how it was broken

upon a stone, how the night came

and you imagined a fire blown

into cascading arcs of stars.