If you like this gray heather
sweater the color of the weather,
you might also like it in light blue
with dark brown buttons,
like a line of birds in the sky.
Once you bought the hook of a snorkel
for a trip you did not take.
Perhaps you would like this mask,
tinted to match the sea,
or this underwater compass.
You bought a rainbow of 100 pens,
each fading into shades
so you might like 100 watercolors
or some primed canvases,
bleak as snowy fields.
Instead, you might enjoy the way the sun
on a snowy field makes your shadow blue
or consider the lilies of the field
and their unbending faith,
which you do not yet have.
If you like the embers of a campfire
red quartz and a stammer of gray,
you might like the memories of camp,
the stitched pines on your breast pocket,
the dreamy heads of moose.
You have bought several books about
life with cancer, and death.
We suggest Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich
or these starlings, landing in a bare tree,
then dozens whipping up.
If you think there is something after this,
you might like this wooden cross,
this book to plan your funeral,
though we see you prefer
the hikes and trails of New England.
Last year’s leaves rim a pond’s edge
and lacy sheets of clattering ice
have caught the weeds, mid-life.
You might also like the cranberry harvest,
the deep, rosy, sea of fruit,
It is backordered
and won’t be in until October.
You will have to live long enough.