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Missing the Missing When you were brave and naked and at my side, What need did I have For photographs, for any memory so remote from flesh and breath? The rhododendron that once reached our high bedroom window Now fails at its own slow pace, Half green, half sullen sticks, leaning into the flagstone patio. I have a picture of you standing before it, that patient smile, And around your head a halo Of May blossoms, in some unnamable shade like rose-maroon. But other images take their shape only inside my mind. You were born to a city Cradled by lake and long river, daughter of the dew and rain, Those young summers spent in a cool house your grandmother Kept by the sweaty Gulf, Afternoons of wet sand, the amniotic bay deep as your knees Even as far as two hundred muddy yards from shore, Scavenger gulls in the sea wrack, Flicker of fish in the small waters around your feet— 87 • • • O girl I never knew, golden and sunripe, wading back To the years we lived inland And up north, safe inside the closed circle of our love! • • • 88 ...

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