With His arm, He had made a circumference around the children’s sweet-diseased world: they sat at the edge of that kingdom. Prepared to depart. A tear, migratory, huge, descended as a guide—a lens fit for several lives thereafter.

Then the long abandoned well resounded with the last stone thrown down.
We summoned forth the last echo at the wall of the old fortress.
We still tasted the leaves of sorrel, one last petal.
We measured our being, the tallest and freest, against the high crown of the castellated wall.
We came by sledge from the heart of the mountain down to where it lost itself and flattened into the fields.

Yes, and we were put to rock in our cradles under the barn roof—once again, with our bodies as shuttles, we wove a swatch of sky above a swatch of earth worn smooth by play.
And of course we hid: shadow after shadow, the game’s counting off left us fully visible in the light—with a forced smile on our face.

Aunt Edith baked me a pie: but no longer could I hold the mixing bowl to help her with the crust. So I ate, ate in farewell, so as to remember with body, with soul.

Sweet-diseased summer, autumn, young winter—oh, we were shedding like leaves everything that was no longer our own. Totally naked suspended in the moment.
From above the circles of the resounding world, slowly He withdrew his arm.