I leave a room beside the rain,
a shelf of stone, a patient square of air.
The river brings its folded boats again;
not every sail has learned to settle there.
Some carry dusk in creases thin as thread.
Some carry nothing anyone can name.
I will not paint arrival where, instead,
a small unfinished journey guards its flame.
The windows gather copper from the west.
Below them, water loosens every line.
What finds a harbor need not pass a test
of being first, or brighter, or called mine.
Yet care requires more than an open door.
A vessel needs the hollow made to fit.
I follow each reflection to its shore
and leave the restless current out of it.
One empty place remains above the bend.
No borrowed boat will make its waiting true.
I keep the space, not call the absence end;
the light belongs to what is coming through.
Then evening changes neither stone nor stream,
but gives their quiet distance room to speak.
I set no clock against the paper dream.
I mend the landing, not the boat's beak.
And when it comes, the place will bear its weight:
not another shore, but home, however late.
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