Letter to Lost City

Rainsound on that roof
patterned me like a loved voice.
Now every rain takes me
back to the creek swifting down
from the mansion of the newspaper magnate
over golden alder leaves,
proving we can still have something
there is no science of—
a used volume flipped through
at the block-large bookstore, and more, even,
than the translated lovers’ grief
at parting, this recipe for
“Wobbly Friendship Bread”
scribbled in the flyleaf.
I copy it for you, friend,
remembering that day lobbing rocks
from the cliff into the sea, musing
we could be in a lost absurdist play
by Aeschylus or Euripides.
Were there such plays?
Were there such blackberries
lining our paths through shore pines
and the scent of burning sand
from the driftwood in the cookstove?
I keep re-steeping the oolong we boiled
on the stove’s iron plate, so long after
it tastes only like the water
of this other city far away.