For L.

More, I suppose, about dreams and the deaths thereof.

For L.

I wanted to write a poem about you, perhaps
a sonnet in the mode of Petrarch, but the words
were inexplicably distant. I thought, for a moment,
that I was not able to write, that I was out of verses,
but then I wrote a haiku about the last red berry
seen through my window stark against the field of snow.

I wonder if Petrarch ever had this problem,
or if his inkwell poured the name Laura onto the page,
leaving him to collect the sheets and sign them.
The truth, I suppose, that it was one afternoon
and we barely spoke, has not deterred poets before,
but the words are so far away, and the berry right here.

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