One foggy, winter morning, I find our childhood 
tucked on a closet shelf. Your ghost follows me
to the kitchen table, we sit surrounded by shoe boxes 
stuffed with old photographs. 

I settle into the scene captured in one photo: 
a young girl praying that Sunday 
at the right-now, here-on-earth altar 
of river and reeds, sunning wet skin 

on a large, flat rock tumbled, humbled 
by water, and the hone of time. 
You incline your head, staring straight 
down the lens—eyes flecked with strength. 

For a brimming moment, I linger 
along the edge of the Kishwaukee—
the old river waits for my remembering—
as if unfolding page after page 

of a great book and the stories found there.
I slip out of the holy nothingness of now,
dive back to when time slows,
and the girl you once were comes into focus.
                        

As I walk along the water,
my mind wanders far away—
replaying scenes
and conversations—
fingering a decades old
ticket stub from a concert
I hope never to forget,
only my bones mark the cadence 
of footstep to footstep.

I glimpse my friend 
poised on a weathered piling.
Standing tall, a gangly 
grey-blue bird 
with scissor-like beak—
born in a state of total 
completion, it knows
exactly what it wants.
To own such confidence,
such agile composure—
rather than the self-doubt
that bird-dogs me daily. 

I know the pluses 
and minuses of math,
but oh, to know the measure
of the heron, how it holds only 
things worth their weight.

Evenings like this,
I want to believe
it’s possible to offer
this ticket stub as payment
for a reprieve
from my constant urge
to question all I do 
or could have done 
differently. 

I place it at the base of the piling, 
settle deep inside the silence,
and watch the sun 
drop into tomorrow.