To Wendy from the Crow’s Nest                                              — Portland

My Dear —           If not from dream, before dawn, When the rain has not perished over the house, And you have sworn off four nights of sleep, And I have wrestled with a mind of airplanes and birth, And to know that you are leaving again in the morning, With me staying — or is it the other way around, Me leaving, and you staying, or both of us Boarding another flight to a strange city? — And always, too, both of us wondering If any of this exists,                     sleep, skies, birth, Mumbling in the frontiers of hotel rooms, Hauling our slender [...]