After a few more hours pulling books
topped with miniature dust bunnies off
her shelves and stuffing garbage bags full of
decades-old papersmagazinearticlesjournals
and lugging them to the driveway to heft into
my trunk a couple hours after sunset, I realize that
they are too hefty. One splits like a punctured
balloon, scattering a portion of what she’d read
and saved, top right corners creased, important
parts underlined or highlighted for reference,
meaning to come back to it later.

Something ruptures in me then, too—
everything disgorges in the dark—as I stand
stunned before I slowly begin to retrieve all
that has gone astray, weeping for the ending
that, for her, came too soon—for us, too late—
and I need to walk away from this detritus
of a life, just for a little bit.

So I let my feet steer me down the sharply
sloped driveway into the inky street and
look up into the night. I locate Orion’s slanting
belt high above the eastern treetops, thinking,
wait—the easiest of all constellations to identify
hangs high in the southern sky this time of year,
arrowing, as that belt does, toward bright
Sirius lower in the heavens.

Pulling from my pocket the magic device
with the nifty star app and pointing it skyward,
I realize that for most of my life I would’ve sworn
that this stretch of road and the parallel path
to the lake head east, toward the foothills
and beyond to the Sierra.

But, I discover, not so. When I’d stand
here a half century ago, cooling off after
doing battle with my mother or bidding
a boyfriend a tender goodnight,
I’d been looking south.

The reorientation stops my tears
as my eyes clear and my ears pick up
a small flotilla of geese overhead, calling,
as they do, turning all that sadness
into wonder, no matter the direction
of my gaze.