The watermark said it was alone with us,

“To do your keeping and comparing.” But there were bushes

On the horizon shaped like hearts, spades, clubs and diamonds.

They were considered

To belong to a second class, to which lower standards

Were applied, as called for in the original rule,

And these standards were now bent inward to become

The invariable law, to which exceptions

Were sometimes apposite, and they liked the new clime,

So bracing here on the indigo slopes

To which families of fathers and daughters have come

Summer after summer, decade after decade, and it never stops

Being refreshing. It is a sign of maturity,

This stationary innocence, and a proof

Of our slow, millennial growth, ring after ring

Just inside the bark. Yet we get along well without it.

Water boils more slowly, and then faster

At these altitudes, and slowness need never be something

To criticize, for it has an investment in its own weight,

Rare bird. We know we can never be anything but parallel

And proximate in our relations, but we are linked up

Anyway in the sun’s equation, the house from which

It steals forth on occasion, pretending, isn’t

It funny, to pass unnoticed, until the deeply shelving

Darker pastures project their own reflection

And are caught in history,

Transfixed, like caves against the sky

Or rotting spars sketched in phosphorus, for what we did.