Wrapping Stones

Everything I am is what survived
love's leaving. Everything I see, eat, want,
have is what survived the goneness
of what love is. Love, like time, takes down
the house, leaving only the partial walls, 
open squares of light for windows,
and a door. the people here wrap
their special stones in large tea leaves.
I walked back from that looking for
a fallen bamboo the right length
for drying kimonos, thinking what
a surprise it is that even such a love
becomes familiar like everything else.
I kept a place for it, stubborn, blessed.
Even through the six years of pain after.
Now it's like the sun going down
each day. Or the moon changing size
predictably all along its range of feeling.
Dies and comes again. but love is
like the salmon that have not come back
to Walnut Creek for the last three years.

-- Linda Gregg (1942-2019) American poet, who passed away today.