“My love, my love, my love,
      why have you left me alone?”
      James Joyce

If I could write : Summer waits your coming,
the flowers are colored, but half-alive and weak,
earth sickens, as I sicken, with waiting,
and the clouds print on the dull moon a dark and blotting streak.
If I could write : no energy is kinetic,
storm breaks nor foot falls until you arrive,
the trees thrive, but no fruit is born to hang
heavily : and the stale wind continues to drive
all pausing summer before it into the distance
from which you, shining, will come . . . . But summer lives,
and minds grow, and nerves are sensitized to power
and no winds wait, and no tree stands but gives
richly to the store of the burning harvest :
the door stands open for you, and other figures pass,
and I receive them joyfully and live : but wait for you
(and sometimes secretly watch for wrinkles, in my glass).