Crater Lake, three phases i stolen time is not golden. there were no birds singing only rising crescendos while you unfolded to him through brave limbs you wrapped around him. he trod where you held the valleys of your chosen discontent, building mounds of precious tears as though they were the abyss at the gateway to earth for him. was it the depths of the blue or the blackness of a forbidden forest? do not let the tears begin new trails, trails where he could not follow. he has held your myth in his arms and you have become his gift forever. ii one year later I walked the Pacific shores engaged the ebb and flow as dialog placing my hands into it and drinking water from a crystal mountain spring. Driving the California coastline, I took the haunting picture of Alcatraz and passed through redwoods, making phone calls home saying, "you write it for me." iii in the quiet, i could not hear or feel you close to me no baptism in tears, no redemption from my fears. i could not hear your voice, but once i thought i felt you breathe for me. i wrote it knowing it would not touch you. how you found that place again the place you left your grief, a year ago, and how you did not understand why you left your tears. when you returned, you only wrote of grackles how they trespassed your inhaled wonder and sullied and crowded the vastness of your adventure. i could not write it large enough, i could not write the person you became regrettably closing in around you as i felt you letting go. grackles clawed the silence in my soul. you waited for phone calls moving from one grief into another. i do not know you now.