Rather than any foretelling, my words
were solitary. I walked from one horizon
to another, ankles brushing the empress-green
underpinnings of sweet grass and nameless
gateways. There was never a solution
for the immortals. Only the red hawks stirring
imperial clouds, a gathering hindsight

of swallows. Bob Hass doesn’t remember
me, but I hit a softball into his chest at a conference
in California. Lazy pop fly, the sun
rounding first. It dinked to the ground.
If I had been legging it out I'd probably pull
a double. A sacrifice fly, we say, because
the runner on third tags up. But I round first. Nobody

ever knows anything for a fact. I had passed Bob Hass
on a path in the woods and he flinched like a sway of seaweed
at high tide. I didn't know to call him Bob. The body holds
its own memory: pop-fly balls, subtle mis-position of the feet, glove
shielding the eyes, accumulative effects of the lupine's shadow,
the lily-flecked green of the meadow where behind together,
the cellular repetitive closeness recalls a wider knowledge, beams
like the moon's mirrored door, as the heartbeat, golden, sun-blinded.