Your back's gentle slope
like the stroke of a brush, or
the sweep of the shore.
I don't know your name.
Birds tell me in a language
I can't understand.
Fish gulp it slowly.
Naiads echo silent sounds
spilling over stones.
Celestial globes
twist out of balance, because
you know and I don't.
And yet, the day dies,
is reborn, crowned with pink dawn
on mist-shrouded peaks
and when you are gone
the birds still whisper, the fish
bubble the same words.
Perhaps, after all,
they do not try to tell me
your name ... but my own.
July-August, 1973
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