More Mist

Your backward glance still unaccounted for,
This lingering of misty morning light
Adds more mist where already there was more,
Making smooth hills and sky merge in my sight,
Making me once again relive the day
You walked through that green gateway to the sea
As if intending just to visit, not to stay,
As if your drowning could be shared with me.
This lingering of misty morning light
Swirling above the hills, churns the blown sky
Into a surging sea; within my sight
I merge with you and cannot tell which I is I,
The I remaining or the I that's gone,
As some remembered whippoorwill sings on
Inside the mist that breeds more mist and more
With your last backward glance still unaccounted for.

"More Mist" first appeared in The New Republic