You have taken away my names.

Last night the loon was crying for you, one call

after another, a ripple of clearest water

virgin and pure, cut off from the source, a mouth

of tumbled grief.

The wind was looking for you. Searching

the trees, scaling the tall pines and knotted

salt oaks, the Spanish moss whispering, asking

the roots

where you have gone.

And long after midnight,

when what was left of the sun's looking

glass showed its face, it hid its broken reflection

in the clouds, the low long banks of fog,

a scrap

of used paper, old parchment, ashamed to be seen.

How can I come to you, without a syllable

of my own? Only this begging

bowl,

poor battered cup of my heart where once given

to feeling

now emptiness steals, catching at each new

breath which, like the shore

air over these waters, these sands,

slips

and runs away.

A keel taking on water,

sail luffing and spilling the wind,

tiller awash in tide and wave

you have set me adrift

in the night where I float without compass anchor

or star.