Scheming in the Snow
There is a time after
what comes after
being young,
and a time after that, he thinks
happily as he walks
through the winter woods,
hearing in silence a woodpecker far off.
Remembering his Chinese friend
whose brother gave her a jade ring from
the Han Dynasty when she turned eighteen.
Two weeks later, when she was hurrying up
the steps of a Hong Kong bridge, she fell,
and the thousand-year-old ring shattered
on the concrete. When she told him, stunned
and tears running down her face, he said,
"Don't cry. I'll get you something better."
Jack Gilbert
Posted over on Borzoi Reader
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