And so I came to be the man who hunched
at the desk under the lamp for six blind months
and followed the loops of cursive spiraling
backward like the song of a Wood Thrush
to the creek below the hermit’s ink-black cave
and the knob of water at its source braiding
and unbraiding down rock shelves opening
a crease into the stone of the hill. One night
a storm thrashed the house, but I did not look up
at the sound of rain’s hard fist against the pane,
or thunder kicking-in a door. I was standing
in the leafiest, greenest light, the stream beside me
tumbling as it would unceasing from the nib
so dazzlingly, so sparklingly…no. And that
was when I knew he’d heard it: a brittle sound
like a dry leaf flipped by wind (a page turning),
that was when I knew that he was clawing up
through mud, rising strobed and tattered,
and that soon I’d feel his bootsteps on the porch,
his hand reaching out, reaching for the screendoor’s
latch that, grasped, became the pen I lifted.