Page 167 of Wayfarers

loved blowing the fluff from dandelions

and not understanding why

anyone wouldn’t want

more sunbeam-yellow flowers

dotting their lawn.

Things like how fortuitous it was

to be alive during such a rare

celestial conjunction but not as lucky

as I felt to be spending a few more

hours in Sylvie’s company, which I leave

unspoken.

I. First Contact

By first contact (we had together learned

a new vocabulary of the heavens), we stare

upward, eyes sheltered behind our eclipse glasses.

We speak in soft voices about the most awesome

things we had seen in the natural world. For Sylvie,

it was a pod of gray whales off Cape Cod, twenty feet

from her boat, rising from the black depths

like fugitive islands and spouting

in unison; their cool breath settling on her

skin like dew in the summer heat.

I wondered what they thought

of the sun, Sylvie says. Imagine seeing it

for just a few minutes each day

and then back into the cold dark.

I can imagine this.

For me, it was seeing a Girl

with Serious Eyebrows at a campground

in Michigan, but this, too, I leave unspoken.