Reginald Shepherd - You, Therefore

        For Robert Philen

 

You are like me, you will die too, but not today:   

you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:   

if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been   

set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost   

radio, may never be an oil painting or

Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are

a concordance of person, number, voice,

and place, strawberries spread through your name   

as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me   

of some spring, the waters as cool and clear...