To Henri Cole

—but I have seen the catamount, its stealth
turned wary by our baffling human presence.     
Every day, through long summer afternoons,
I waited for it in an abandoned field 
to descend the far swale in mythic grace, 
my piece poised to blurt out its deafening words.
But the days passed without it coming.

So I put away my gun and readied to leave
when suddenly I saw it waft across the road 
like a tawny length of ghost, and I drove 
to where the pines succored its shadow 
and in the umbering light I saw its long 
tail twitch its animal unease just once—
then it was gone, driven deep into that place
where memory and faith mingle in the brain
hunting a clear purpose for existing.

The six pairs of running socks you gave me
have all run away as you did.  
I shuffle through my drawers 
but cannot find them anywhere.

So I write this elegy as if I had 
a dozen feet all orphaned and bare.

I think of Neruda, and how little 
I know of him, his ode to the socks 
he received, their soft rabbit pleasure,
and I think of his stout benefactress 
descending from the steep Alpaca places
with her rough peasant hands full 
of the billowing wool she would 
dye the color of mountain flowers
before she spun and knit her present;

then I imagine their spirits arcing 
over the Andes and on through 
the breathless lapse of space and time 
into this empty drawer I shut now
and walk away from, barefoot as birth.