It is necessary to think of a poem 

that is itself and its other at once.

 

In Maine, lost: a woman offered 

to drive us down the road.

 

The work of the poem, an opening into

the way we view the world.

 

She found us under

her garage, protection from the rain.

 

What is present and absent, built 

into our artifice.

 

We had with us: maps, a compass,

notebooks, a collection of stones and leaves.

 

Poetic language rises from other

poetic language, pointing back.

 

We thought of calling, then didn’t. The rain

stopped soon after it began.

 

Becoming is a resistance to order.

Absence is always present.

 

Bodies are always discovered when 

there is no more use for them, as in

 

her body was discovered 

in her apartment this morning.

 

The world and the earth exist 

as each other’s other.

 

Your body discovered in motion,

I remember, I wasn’t there.

 

The beginning already contains

the end latent within itself.

   

But this was all before. We found a tree 

capsized, its roots exposed.

 

What kind of language did we have

for each other? Language

 

requires casting into poetry in order to see 

what is there and what is not.

 

There will always be

more I could have said.