End of a Lonely Day

there is a landscape, veined, which only a child can see
or the child’s older self, a poet,
—Adrienne Rich, “Dreamwood”

End of a lonely day
                  spent watching rain
Showers lift and fall,
Drafting—and erasing—landscapes
                                                across the hours.
My children are scattered like thoughts
I could not keep.
                        Night falls
On the harbour now, and I search
For a book to keep me
From my grief,

                  
                   to find my sorrow—
And recollect my wealth—written
Out in other lives and other times and ways:

 
         For each of us is all of us,
                   in the end, and morning
Is only hours away.