The Closing Hour

             There are pleasures so ordinary that we barely notice them. 
They leave no impression worth mentioning, even. Not
the leaves but the delicate under-leaves that we’d
             somehow missed. Not the stranger whom we’ve never met, 
whom we pass on the walk each morning,
but the matched set of off-white-not-quite-ivory-though
             spaniels that seem to float like two patches of low fog 
to either side of him. I used to worry
about the impression I left on others; and then I really
             don’t remember which came first: I grew up?
I grew tired? Desire had become by then something different
from what it had been. More hurricane than tornado, its
             damage therefore more easily at least prepared against, 
if not forestalled. That certain gestures
don’t so much linger as seem to make a routine of
             unexpectedly becoming more apparent some moments 
than at others doesn’t mean we miss them, means there were parts 
that we loved. I regret almost nothing. I come
             in peace A lost beast A crown of feathergrass A matching wreath