For Jim


Blinded by the borderless blackness of space, I am grateful for my only travel companions, the distant bonfire stars. I am a force focused on my target, zigzagging in response to a fierce magnetic pull. I find him sitting in an old ruby-red fishing boat, casting his line onto an unruffled sea. Always the fisherman. Setting his pole aside, he pats the seat next to him. The oars hang abandoned in their oarlocks, creating a musical lapping. It has been 17 years since his death at age 85, but he’s been expecting me. We sit in silence as the boat drifts farther from shore. Love settles on us like mist—it beads on our eyelashes, sits on our tongues, our fingertips. It is at home in our lungs. Our minds, like peonies, open in each other’s light. Your mind is taking you somewhere. Follow your thoughts wherever they go. Was I thinking? Did he speak? The blazing stars, standing by to take me home, make their intricate calculations with sun and moon to mark this place as sacred space.