as gifts—one a gray with a band of

acid green on its toe, its nose,

one a wool heather of moss

and brown and honey, with touches of scarlet

and black. In his socks, I am jubilant,

I think of who I will bequeath them to,

when I am under

your bootsoles with him—

whoever you are, holding me now in hand.

Suddenly

(Ruth Stone, June 8, 1915–November 19, 2011)

And suddenly, it’s today, it’s this morning

they are putting Ruth into the earth,

her breasts going down, under the hill,

like the moon and sun going down together.

O I know it’s not Ruth—what was Ruth

went out, slowly, but this was her form,

beautiful and powerful

as the old, gorgeous goddesses who were

terrible, too, not telling a lie

for anyone—and she’d been left here so long, among

mortals, by her mate—who could not,

one hour, bear to go on being human.

And I’ve gone a little crazy myself

with her going, which seems to go against logic,

the way she has always been there, with her wonder, and her

generousness, her breasts like two

voluptuous external hearts.

I am so glad she kept them, her whole

life, and she got to be buried in them—

she, 96, and they

maybe 82

each, which is

164 years

of pleasure and longing. And think of all

the poets who have suckled at her riskiness, her

risqué, her body politic, her

outlaw grace! What she came into this world with,

with a mew and cry, she gave us. In her red

sweater and her red hair and her raw

melodious Virginia crackle,

she emptied herself fully out

into her songs and our song-making,

we would not have made our songs without her.

O dear one, what is this? You are not a child,

though you dwindled, you have not retraced your path,

but continued to move straight forward to where

we will follow you, radiant mother. Red Rover, cross over.

After Reading Shallcross

(for C.D., and Forrest)

1

When I was reading your poem, seeing your character

whole, bright as granite, not hap-

hazard but improv elegant,

I felt unworthy to write you, I started to feel

low, then I hugged your book, and cried out, I am

blessed, I am blessed, I am blessed, I am blessed,

flooded with the fortune of having known you and been

known by you,

and I kissed your book, hard, feeling

the strength of my mouth—not hard as in difficult, I don’t

think of myself as difficult—

that’s my folly, my dishonor, to think

I’m easy. It was not hard for my husband

to leave me. What had been hard, for him,

after the first thirty years, was

to be with me—easy for his body,

I did not know that had little, for him,

anymore, to do with love.

It felt, to me, like love itself,

which is just to say how little I knew.

But one thing I know is that one of the things,