(for James)
I return to this poor potter’s field of memory
one year older
walking round and round the empty
hollow space where you had been,
laying down in the spring-tall grass
a burnished circle of silvered green:
a band wedding every solemn faithful pace
to the next hollow ring of the holy bell
striking slow and steady measures —
each stroke a step, a station;
marking the intersection of penitents and angels.
This wreath is all I can leave; there can be no other record.