MARY
How do you know when a collection is complete?
All these things surround me:
My husband’s beloved playing cards,
Manuscripts, the trees upstate.
I shall keep the name,
And give it all away.

HENRY FLAGLER
Pushing forward along the coast
I have quite forgotten the point of progress.
This is how I relax.
They tell me sand lacks stability…
That little shorebird snatches opportunity
In the space between waves.

MARY
I prefer no photographs
But today the sun has escaped
The clouds.
This will remain, he says,
Long after you are gone.
My old checkered dress and my mother’s apron
On this stone bench we found in France. I sit.
Behind me, out of view,
the elderberries hang ripely among the ferns.
Tree frogs croak.
This, my everyday.