I’m not spending the rest of my life
trying to sketch him back in,
but sometimes he insists,
appearing behind me in the mirror,
combing over his balding dome,
thin gray wisps the wind
picks up like the wings
of his Chauve Souris, sailing
in the Tall Ships armada,
then through the Panama Canal
to the Galapagos Islands.
Mostly he sleeps in darkness
and silence, like bats in my attic,
but I glimpse him fleeting
through our adult children’s
expressions, and sometimes even mine,
or memories arise of us
with our three young ones in Machu Picchu,
in Peruvian jungles,
in an Amazonian motorized canoe,
where a guide shines his light
into a sharp-toothed caiman’s eyes,
as I hold a child on my lap,
as the sun begins to set
on a snowy, mid-winter day,
well into a new century,
where I’m married again,
when I least expect
his flying right by me—
deaf to my yelps, but attuned
to my least vibration,
bent over a desk, sketching.