This morning I woke to slow rain,

and remembered waking with you

sprawled across my bed in a toccata

of bones muscles skin and breath.

The night before, as we talked

on Ken’s front porch, the party

chattering and laughing behind us,

you told me your name was Sunny,

short for Sunshine. I still see your hands

folding and laying your jeans

and poet’s shirt on the walnut

blanket chest, and tucking green

underwear under the pillow next

to mine, like a secret only the two

of us shared. And this morning

I could see again your long, bronze

hair straggled across that white pillow

in a disarray of lazy loops and spirals.

And the most persistent memory

of all, the easy way you slid under

the navy-blue comforter, as though

you had done it many times before,

as though you had lived with me

for decades, both of us knowing we were

right, no longer two wandering souls.

That night, in a matter of hours,

we had become comfortably married

for twenty years. Seeing raindrops

slithering down the window this morning

tells me you have never left me, though

the blue pillow has not held a secret

in decades, though I have not seen you

since that rainy morning twenty years ago.

Evening. Quiet dusk. We sit at the oak table

after supper. Elfie leafs through her mother’s

photo album. Retracing her life, she says.

Then, “Last night I had this strange dream.”

I stop carving a piece of luan mahogany, a bowl

for our friend Miggles. Elfie closes the book.

“Except it wasn’t a dream.” I pick up a piece

of sandpaper. “I woke up, came in here.

But it wasn’t this room. I was in our house and

another house at the same time.” She tells me

of a sleepy hollow chair, a vintage bridge lamp,

a woman working a jigsaw puzzle on a rickety

card table. “I sat down with her, like we are now,

and picked up a piece of the puzzle. Wood.

I can still feel the grain.” She stares at her hands.

“A past life?” I offer. “I had torn the veil.

My hands were so small. I was a young boy.

My name is Frederick. I am in his life now.”

Memory drops a drawing

onto my sketch pad,

a bare sycamore

clinging to the flood-swept

river bank. And on a high

branch a lone crow

staring into the bitter

February wind. That day

I asked Crow, Where are we

going, with this queasy

wobbling planet, struggling

to shift its magnetic poles?

Crow scraped his beak

on the branch, said nothing.

But now, as I sketch, perhaps

his answer will emerge

in my charcoal marks, flecked

bark, squiggly branches.

And, finally, it does. White

paper behind the tree,

holding the branches

still, in the blustery wind,

and beyond Crow’s black

silhouette, Crow’s silence.