~PATRICIA FARGNOLI~
SAG HARBOR SUNDOWN
for Maureen Mecagni
Later that afternoon
after the windblown rolling
of the Cross Sound ferry,
after my nap in your spare
spindle
bed,
when the crows descended
into the scrub pine
forest, the
yawls
slunk silently back into
the harbor
and we sat on your wooden deck
talking of your work
for the Whaler's
Presbyterian,
mine at the clinic; how we
ache
in all the wrong places,
clichés
about pounds gained,
discovering
gray.
No talk of death÷though these days
it always surrounds
us÷the shadow
of a cloud moving across
water,
an answering shadow moving
beneath
waves.
Instead, you told me how you leave
old bread, milk-soaked, in
saucers
for the creatures that come
at night out of the scrub
pines
and about last December's
deer
running wounded to your
lawn
where she stood
motionless, a stone,
before bounding into the
opposite
forest÷
the trail of her blood
bothering your days long
afterward.
As though no time had passed
we looked out over the
sound
in that absent-minded way
we've
learned
to stare into the past or
beyond
the present.
We stayed there until
night floated
a last sail across the
ebbing water.
© by Patricia
Fargnoli
