Dust

We funnel it between the stones.

What stones become is what

holds them together. A crushing

summer: white hydrangeas, in

dry winds, nod. In Adirondacks

we can’t fix, in a twilight beyond

repair, we recline, and an orange

tanager—what you asked

someone to come back

as—lights, and vanishes.

Copyright © 2019 Andrea Cohen. This poem originally appeared in Kenyon Review, May/June 2019. Reprinted with permission of the author.