I didn’t know I was blue,
until I heard her sing.

I was never aware so much
had been lost
even before I was born.
There was so much to lose
even before I knew
what it meant to choose.

Born blue,
living blue unconfessed, blue
in concealment, I’ve lived all my life
at the plinth
of greater things than me.

Morning is greater
with its firstborn light and birdsong.
Noon is taller, though a moment’s realm.
Evening is ancient and immense, and
night’s storied house more huge.

But I had no idea.
And would have died without a clue,
except she began to sing. And I understood

my soul is a bride enthralled by an unmet groom,
or else the groom wholly spoken for, blue
in ardor, happy in eternal waiting.

I heard her sing and knew
I would never hear the true

name of each thing
until I realized the abysmal
ground of all things. Her singing
touched that ground in me.

Now, dying of my life, everything is made new.
Now, my life is not my life. I have no life
apart from all of life.

And my death is not my death,
but a pillow beneath my head, a rock
propping the window open
to admit the jasmine.

I heard her sing,
and I’m no longer afraid.
Now that I know what she knows, I hope
never to forget
how giant the gone
and immaculate the going.
How much I’ve already lost.
How much I go on losing.
How much I’ve lived
all one blue. O, how much
I go on living.

When I take my dachshund jogging, boys and widows gawk 
and stop tossing balls or lopping limbs off shrubs.  They call 
and point at long, pot-bellied Oscar trotting like a rocker horse, 
tongue wagging, dragging on grass when he hops over skateboards, 

long muzzle wide as if laughing, eager, sniffing the breeze. 
All Oscar needs is a tree like a mailbox, postcards from dogs 
he barks at at night, and odd whiffs he can't place.  When he stops 
and squats, up runs a neighbor's collie tall as a horse, 

stalking like a swan meeting an eel, muzzle to muzzle in dog talk, 
collie tail like a feather fan.  Wherever we go, we're not alone 
for an hour, devoted hobblers on the block, the odd couple-- 
long-legged bony man jogging along, obeying the leash law, 

the black, retractable nylon sagging back to Oscar, who never balks 
or sasses when I give the dangling leash a shake, but trots to me 
desperate for affection, panting like a dog off to see Santa, 
willing to jog any block for a voice, a scratch on the back. 

I've seen that hunger in other dogs.  I watched my wife 
for forty years brush dogs that didn't need the love he does. 
When my children visit, my oldest grandsons trot with him 
to the park, that glossy, auburn sausage tugging and barking, 

showing off.  The toddlers squat and pat him on his back. 
They touch his nose and laugh, and make him lick them on the lips. 
Good Oscar never growls, not even if they fall atop him. 
He was a gift from them, last Christmas, a dog their pop 

could take for walks and talk to.  Oscar would have loved my wife, 
who spoiled and petted our old dogs for decades, coaxing them up 
for tidbits on the couch beside her, offering all the bliss 
a dog could wish for, a hand to lick, a lap to lay their heads. 

Oh, he's already spoiled, barks at bluejays on his bowl, 
fat and lonely unless I'm home.  But how groomed and frisky 
he could be if she were here, how calm to see us both 
by the fire, rocking, talking, turning out the lights. 

For Grandfather, in memory of Grandmother Anna

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?