Stranger Recalled

I wrote this one for a friend I met my first full year in SF, she shared poetry with me, tea, and a wonderful warmth I did not quite appreciate then. She literally came and went in a flash but left me with a deep sense of wonder...I wish I could thank her someday...

STRANGER RECALLED

(first version: 8^th December 2004)

for christine littell

she was a raindrop

bringing possibility, resurrection

she was a first and last breath

rife with unknowns

a home re-discovered

after years of sorrow

she gave me all of Whitman in one poem

read after tea and laughter at night

she became rest

silencing old tears as she vanished

she I’ll recall

when years’ labors drown out

tears dried of their eternity

only her poem

will I carry by the sea, by that green loneliness…