We three (then four, five) at the table as though it’s never been another way — and there is an empty chair, an absence — for my eyes alone — are these fields further from us now, pastures green and resigned to memory? — can we trust the waves or shall we not descend today into those iron waters? — their roaring roused me, dark still, mid-roving in a dream of green dresses, and lo and behold, the very nigglings that I wrote about surfaced — how much have I let slide these past years? — like silt deposits on my sanity, building until — the deluge — the breaking of the fuse as we wonder dumbfounded how it could have happened — as though entropy is a surprise and a mystery — alas, in all of the restless rambling gallivanting I have failed to notice the filigree — the detailed etchings of god’s hands in every nook and cranny — yesterday, you visioned a scattering of nooks in your nest and I dreamed myself into one, curled up at a typewriter or scribbling notes for a novel, curls of steam from my tea tickling my chin, a blanket draped around me with room for you to nuzzle in — and finally, a piece of pantry with shelves of jars I’ve filled with fodder — a patch of ground with roots that I have sown with my own fingers — leaves I’ve admired bathing in the light of moon and sun — a whole matted ground of the ice-plant trimming from the afternoon’s grey shoreline — in this short time that I have left, I wish to plant things, my heart and soul in soil, nothing worth toiling for more than this — is it for guilt, or something deeper still? — I see the world that these children are inheriting, and I would bow my head in shame but instead, I’ll lift to the sky and pray for a rain that may never come — and return to now, us ‘round this pastel-dusted table, to our gladness and the rising sun.