Sitting in the yard, the last days of linen,
two cardiganed friends at a picnic table, a bag of frozen soups

and gluten-free loaves delivered, a tray of tea
and milk, a cat in the grass, a garden untended down the side

of the house, a child leaving for school,
neighbors jogging past with dogs, people walking quickly

along the river beyond the rooftops
across from us, as though walking the ridges of so

many houses, as though walking through
the impossibilities of this world on their way to the next

while we sit talking oncology consults,
friends’ cases, how people are who one of us has seen

when the other hasn’t for months or
years. Everyone used to be so much younger and different

in their thinking. Everyone wanted to
say things plainly or memorably, and eventually

to publish. Now most people we know
would settle for slightly less pain for portions of a day,

for knowing that if we were taken, the hearts
of those young men at school would beat again.

I almost prefer thinking those figures are
walking the rooves, on their way to way past this plane

we’ve landed, these weighty hand-thrown
mugs in our human hands, as an almost undiscernable

September mist suggests something,
coming sideways beneath the treeshade, coming

to us now as everything comes now out
of season and out of rhythm, at the only time we know,

right to our faces, which tell us, which tell
one another, all the truths there are left to pass, to publish.