Dave liked to read and he’d always liked poetry, even when he was forced to learn whole verses in school when he was a kid. He and Tom had a couple of long conversations about Seamus Heaney; about Patrick Lane and Lorna Crozier; about Percy Bysshe Shelley’s heart, which had been pressed between the covers of a book after his body was cremated on the beach in Italy—true according to Marchand, the biographer Tom had read on quiet days in the shop. Dave wondered about the story of the pressed heart. The two discussed Byron and his great love, Countess Teresa. Tom admitted that he sometimes dabbled at poetry himself, and had been doing so for decades. Especially when he’d needed a change after spending hours at his desk in Rigmarole on days when few customers appeared. Ida had never encouraged Tom any time he’d discussed his poetry with her, but he didn’t mention this to Dave. Nor had he ever sent a poem to a magazine to see if it would be accepted for publication. Still, he’d filled one notebook and kept another, partly filled, in the top drawer of his desk at the shop. Soft and black, its cover was imprinted with an illustration of the planets. The notebook was old enough that Pluto had not yet been relegated to dwarf-planet status.

Dave’s response, when he’d learned that Tom wrote poetry, was to admit that the poems he was most partial to were “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.”

“I never did get a college education,” said Dave. “But in high school, I had an English teacher who taught me to love poetry. Because of her, I’ve been reading it ever since. Everyone thought I should be playing football, but I wanted to study poetry, drama, literature. I’m a reader. There isn’t one inmate who shares my love of verse. Not that I can find, anyway.” He carried on, and recited for Tom:

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast.

“Oh yeah, and the last verse.”

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

“That’s all I can call up for the moment.”

Tom was thinking of how Joyce Kilmer had been killed during the First World War. He didn’t say that to Dave, who, in a chilling, rattly voice, suddenly came up with Coleridge:

He holds him with his glittering eye—

The Wedding-Guest stood still,

And listens like a three years’ child:

The Mariner hath his will.

Dave gave a hearty laugh and challenged Tom to recite some of his own verses, but Tom wasn’t in the mood. They were silent for a while, and Tom recalled, but to himself, a stanza he’d written earlier in the year. Last New Year’s Day, in fact. Ida had been buried three months by then. He’d been feeling down when he pulled out his notebook. The poem was not to be shared. Not with anyone. Not even Dave, who loved Kilmer’s tree poem.