My Mistake — by James Richardson

It seems I misspoke, once, an entire roof,
shaded or lit, and unevenly littered
according to the sweep of a slender-needled pine,
and moored by one black wire to a clump of woods
and thence to everything else. I thought it was mine,
and remembered a torrent of birds there
in a morning so early it could have been the first.
But maybe it was the window, heavily in sway,
out of your parents', out of your sisters' way,
you had told me of that I was looking through.
Way up, you could make out a future
in which you would tell someone, as now I realize
you tried to, how the sun fed in the shingles,
all day, that near and nearer beast of heat
you slept against, breathless, all your last summer.
Until you packed softly, as if for one night,
and were gone forever. It amazes me.
But I who decide nothing am too often amazed,
and I should have known that window,
so vividly half sky, half slate,
was yours; since all I have left are these paler things
no one else calls love. Pardon, my mistake.