Reunion

You seemed lovely then,
you with your shadow-breaking smile
and so much light beneath the skin,
beneath the sun that spun above us
and the wind.

There is no hiding it: This sun
is not the sun we knew,
or ever hope to know,
now that our coming near again
after our letting go, leads only
to shadows, dried-up landscapes,
last summer's cicadas stunned into silence.

(from Sentences, 1976)