Fog pours in through the half-open windows. Fills our small bedroom by the bay. Pools

A frosted cake layered with cars and people, rosetted with gulls, points out toward quiet afternoon islands.

You, Picasso aigu in your summer straw shading blue eyes and sailor stripes, juggling a bubble of cold wine.

I’m glad for mine. The long, aquiline form of it. The way it has shaped, informed my face;

Those many, sung and unsung, who gave themselves, often gave up their lives, to fight, in wars,

The tender new leaves of the trees, emergently green. The white feathers of the wading egret.

Burnished at first, then blemished— an earthly foreshadowing. Then bearded for a while.

If he could see you now. Really see you. Take you entirely in. As you are now, in these days, places

It arrives on a warm white cloud. It arrives on soft rolls of ocean waves along a sand pebbled shore. It arrives on a bed

Between the keys. Between the chords. Between the notes. Between the sound you make

The courtly old lady, widowed for decades, and her calico cat, who take each afternoon sun

Blonde head under baobab. Sun under shade. You sit on an African day,

Who wore a green plastic visor the color of a ginger ale bottle. Who had a raspy voice and Charles Coburn kind of face. A forever bachelor

What we belong to. What we can point to out there; around us. And what a singular gift. Our innate sentience.