The No-Name Tapestries

When I think of the dead, it means

they’re thinking

of me, I delude myself happily, on occasion,

assuming the past

a thing to cherish like a face

surprised I bothered to come at all, given

the rain and the long drive.

But you were always let’s go anyway.

The commonest phrase: alive and well.

As if we jumped out of a hole

to stand here radiant.

In the no-name old tapestries, many

with halos, a glow or

a circle of jagged lines around each head

never bowed at the table, simply

looking straight on like a mirror gives us

back to ourselves.

If sometimes the women

in those lush hangings so plainly dressed,

their rims woven

deep and lit, turn sideways, the hills,

a blue distance involved — 

Out there. The one vanished, or just now

walking away —