If there is one poem left when the guests have gone,
I will take it in my hands and watch it flicker like so many fireflies--
I will hold it in my palm against the night sky like a yellow moon
and gaze at it in wonder--
then I will take it on my tongue
to taste the sweetness and the bitterness
of all that poetry can and cannot be.
 
The whale bone’s a transitional object, like this line, mitigating the space between my new island and the inland sea I left behind.