Everything can be replaced—

the trilobite kissed into the fragile shale,

the cup I hold high and see

lamplight around my fingertips,

even the kestrel

circling high over the creek.

But the replacement is never satisfactory—

a quail for a heron, a thunderstorm

for a mountain, a child on a tricycle

for some equivalent innocence,

but not the same, not even close.

The fractured fossil is swept,

and an ashtray takes its place, or a plate

of apricots pecked with

slapdash scars by the jays.

The fallen oak is replaced by a view

of sailboats, and the small craft themselves

are taken by a squall that

is broken by dawn.

That’s why this poem will be

unfinished.  The deer steal down

to eat the new landscaping

and no one sees them.

         They leave the bare stems

of the ivy, and return to the eucalyptus,

trees as slender and tawny

as the secretive young

who by this midsummer

must be gone.  Grown,

I mean.  Still here.