It has come to my attention that the heart-shaped rocks
are missing. The ones I remembered them by—
those who have gone before. Gone before meaning
to some other place I have not yet seen. Gone before
meaning gone. It is also true that I have no
boots. I have left them in the previous location, the one
with the tattered blue edges. I left my hat, too,
somewhere along the highway between one place
and the next. It was spring when I traveled here;
now comes the northern solstice, when it gets darker
and colder, then less dark, but colder
still. Someone tells me that the earth has already tilted
back toward the sun. That the days are getting longer
in small blue increments, but I have not yet
noticed. I am hatless, bootless, among the mink
and the deer. A little dog in the shape of a bear
approaches. Twenty-nine swans take shelter
in the estuary, heads tucked into back-feathers,
white clouds floating. A kingfisher flashes its blue
signal across the water. I pick up a rock,
perfectly round, not one of the heart-shaped stones
I remembered them by, the ones who left, but still,
maybe if I keep it, I will think of them. I will imagine them
walking down this path, one after another, like a parade
of broken suns. Later, I put it in the window, near
where the moon sometimes makes
an appearance. I set the table with blue dishes
as if for company. I turn up the heat. I don’t like
the new people at the table or the dispatches
from the city. I don’t like the cold.
I await the arrival of a pale blue hat as if it were
some kind of savior. Some kind of beacon
in the darkness. The darkness that is not
the totality, not despair, not a portent
of whatever is to come, just winter, stupid
and cold, a normal astronomical moment
when living things hide or go
elsewhere, when trees hold in the fingers
of their bare hands the empty pockets
left behind by birds. I tell myself
a story about the sun and the moon, about
what happened once and can happen
again: the boy on the bicycle,
the crowns made of paper, tiny eclipses appearing
in the shadow of every leaf.
—Catherine Goldhammer
Catherine Goldhammer, a poet living in Rhode Island, has received support from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for rhe Creative Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.