Nostalgia

Happy is she whom the sea takes
while she sleeps, then sends back
to a warm bed before she wakes.

Happy is she whose ancestors
broke rocks in the field she’ll mow today.

One had spoken his name aloud in her dream.
All winter he’d pasted stamps into a book—sure
to own by May the black shoes he claimed
he’d need to enter the white city.

Now rain shimmers in the granite’s
engraved letters: dates of entry and departure.

A pleasure when the world inside hums in time
to the world outside. Happy is she to dress early
and walk the short walk to their crypts.