Our leafy souk displays thirty years of
possessions now surplus to our downsized lives:

100 feet of snake-coiled garden
hose, paperbacks, read but not

abandoned in beach rentals and coach-class
seats; six large bowls with flawed

glazes from a dear friend's kiln, a tin
roofed birdhouse claimed by wrens through

twenty springs; an easel from your
dabble in watercolors; the child's

dresser you first painted blue and later
pink; the guitar for which I had the taste

but not the touch; two wicker chairs from
which we watched the summer sun go

down a hundred million miles
beyond the dogwoods—

Let's buy it all back, you say though
we both know that everything must go—

the Pawley's Island hammock where
we lay so many cooling
darks counting and counting

still farther stars.