Up a curving road
            on a dry gold hill,
            you follow at thirty paces.

Sometimes I look back and you’re there,
            sometimes not.

I came back to northwest California,
            dry grass wind gold ultra blue,
            back to late childhóod, when I lóved yóu.

Shadows of spheroid clouds:
            the hilltop dark
            where the road curves out of sight.

There’s a nearly inaudible music,
            sparse, for a single instrument,
            composed posthumously; stopped,
            I stare into the slow collision
            of three clouds.

You stop, out of sight.
            Three clouds,
            suddenly familiar, disunite.

How can I know these are not the clouds
            we saw when there was such a thing
            as indestructibility
            ten seconds/years ago, how can I know
            if you’re behind me or ahead?

I turn downhill to monitor the clouds
            over the coast and sea, not ponderous
            intelligences haunted by interstices
            of fey blue, not anthropomorphic,
            fully alien.