Take what is yours, she said, and vanished among the dunes.
He held her gift in his broken hands.
It was a seagull, wriggling until he blessed its wings, 
sent it flying toward the cliffs. 
All night he dreamed of coins, each engraved 
with a sharp-featured face.
He could taste metal on his tongue.
A woman offered him a calf and a rope, but he held on 
as his ears roared in pain.
It wasn’t exactly pain, but the running sound of water over rocks.
Doctors told him he would speak French someday, 
he would play chess in the park. The woman who owned the carousel 
warned against leaping toward the sun.
His counselor gave him a book about ants, sent him and the mule
to find the hidden spring. That water was clear and wonderfully cold.
He filled his canteen. The mule drank and rubbed its back against an oak.
When he returned to the campsite, fire danced in the rock ring.
His friends drank and sang until darkness flooded their tired bones.
                        

Was it only yesterday, the time 
of black night and stars we hadn’t seen in years?

It was the time of witches and ghosts, 
the time of owls and the moon.

The writer stroked his graying beard,
talked about magic, as if he believed it was real. 

It was the time of strangers and spells, 
of canned goods we ate cold, the time of no sleep. 

I remember you splashing through puddles 
carrying a child, cars floating on the river road. 

It was the time of daughters and wives, 
time of cats and their soaking fur. 

It was boat time, a time of ladders and trees. 
It was a night of weeping and blades,

a night of improbable dreams.
In the gale, even the moon was lost, 

owls ripped from the bleeding sky, 
their cries echoing against crumbling walls.