Now We Are Five

The biographer’s lament The human truth For Lucy Newlyn I’m emptying the boxes in which I stored the exhumed bits of you, touching again the things you touched, a broken wind harp, a shard of hand-blown bottle crusted with brown sediment, some lines you crossed through with a scratchy quill that spattered ink.

I’ve filed my notes cross-referenced for those who ask how I worked on you, with you; my book is closed.

For the first time in a decade I dine alone When I saw you as a boy skipping stones on lovely Otter, a young man crashing down Helvellyn in the dark scattering shale trying not to spill a trout, a grown man screaming when a surgeon picked hard turds out of you with a scalpel, an old man pillow wet with tears for a son you’d knelt to bless one night of icicles, I thought to write your life, hoping to be worthy.

You refused to be tethered.

I tracked your balloon across so many fields and woods and cities learning to weigh the wind, and when winds failed, to make predictions with sextant, compass and known maps of your next landfall, to create 75