Your name

When you’re gone I chew on your name
like cud. I ruminate. I dream in the daylight
under perfect white
clouds fleecing across the sky like ducks
on a pond, or stones skipping
a river to the other side, where you
stand tall and proud. I need no metaphor
for your shoulders, nor for your hair
blowing in the wind that cannot rip your name away.
You are complete in yourself, dear heart,
and the fish in the stream know it. The cows
downriver bathing know it, and the stones
and the sky and the mountains tall as fences.
You are the center pin holding the world together,
the sun in Copernicus’s eyes
as he tore them from the telescope, dazzled.