In Montague we ate fruit first. Downriver, pits

we gave to the water eddied away and sank fast.

The mill hosts parties, weddings, a bride

is here, trailing tulle in the dust, we move cherries

without looking from the bag to our mouths.

I’d put my hands on them, the books

that slept inside. I ran fingers up their spines

above the Sawmill fifty feet down, years before

I took you there with paper bags of bread.

The trees lost leaves; they joined us on the rocks –

but by the time we’d gotten to the wine

whose red was like the rumpled trees,

you laid your book aside. We were among

empty paper bags and rind, some stems.

The water turns itself; the mill-wheel sleeps.

Upstairs, a woman loses her papers

out the window, her body swanning out

over the water, she is grasping, fugitive pages

join us on the rocks. The river steals a spoon.