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Our limit in the woods
was earshot. The stirred wind-
chimes of her voice drew us
home through scrub and fern.
Following it we heard the last
squabble of swifts in the boughs,
the curt argot of bats
climbing from dark rookeries.
And by summer’s end
that invisible line cutting
through laurel and poplar
was buried deep below sense
like the sound of our
own names, a vowel
drawn over the world
that set our limits
and to whose center,
chilled by night-sounds,
we were happy to return—
our mother and our mother tongue.
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This is next level.
Been trying to buy you a cup of coffee but can't figure how to do it.