Coda

You waited at the station entrance.

I was late. My hair had turned gray

but there you were, all the snow gone

all the leaves blown, the leopard sun

having leapt across a life never lived.

 

My gaze falls on your black eyelashes

the black silk folds of your dress.

We mourn the same self as we walk

beneath the tracks of falling stars

gone before we see them.

Copyright © 2019 by William Wadsworth. This poem was first printed in The Paris Review, Issue 231 (Winter 2019). Used with the permission of the author.