This is the first winter without him.
In September,
when the boats came back,
they sent Finlay, watch cap in hand,
gazing down at my doorstep,
mumbling the news:
thirty miles out,
as they chased a school of cod,
a random wave threw him
over the gunwale and under the keel.
Coast Guard cutters criss-crossed the site
for days. No one found a trace.
Water is an evil accepted;
by drops it rolls off the eaves,
over the bent light of clear ice,
freezing with all promises.
Icicles hang long, with impossible points,
like daggers around my house,
or the teeth of a deep-sea fish
that may have watched him
loll toward a fathomed underworld.
Now the house is cold as a box,
echoing with what is no longer said.
I set no places at the table any more;
I eat silently where I may,
while the waves still churn,
half a mile away.
