When I wake this morning, I can hear the windchimes furiously  
ringing. My first thought is it’s like following those golden winds  
after a full night of making love. When I dream now, there it is,  
something to move toward. It’s three in the morning and again  
I am caught between hours. Memory is like a map, impossible  
to maintain accuracy when flattening a sphere. I remember  
my child’s white-blond curls at the base of his neck. If I tried,  
I could remember something bright held between a long marriage.  
And I cannot say my father was ever a gem, but he could illume  
like opal nightlights in the sky. So I walk in this predawn.  
An ancient star briefly streaks through all that mystery.  
I do remember that when a star dies, no other shifts into its place.  
There is a black emptiness that, to the naked eye, appears  
just centimeters apart. I make my wish too late. And anyway,  
what is there to wish for in this liminal darkness? Not dreamlike, no— 
but veiled. Rain from days ago has crystallized. Low in the sky  
is the three-starred asterism that makes Orion’s Belt. One after the next,  
a straight line. But the whole form of him, the raised arm and the club  
of the great hunter, I can’t make out. Sometimes dark is too dark,  
and sometimes it’s like a blaze embedded in an open wound.  
That’s where my strength comes from. I am great friends with grief,  
but this kind? It’s choral, rattles in this wind. Loss doesn’t have to mean  
lost, I reply. Ice is a great beauty when it fractures. The streak of a star  
is an incision. I have three open sutures. That’s how the light lets in, lets out.