From Below

There’s a kind of shadow, easily missed, that

depth of field and depth of character

sometimes share

between them. Suffering, there, can seem

especially far away, though it’s 

never far. It was one of those days when

just to have spoken at all

aloud feels like honesty or maybe more like

wanting to be honest, as if one had forgotten,

almost—not to want to,

but how. A lost art, 

like predicting the future by 

listening to the sounds leaves make, each

to the other, touching,

not touching ...

                         And yet so much,

still, to wish for. To have loved

differently, less deeply, more

reliably. I call that hope,

not regret. Bellflowers,

sand flowers; there at the field’s far edge.