For Isabelle Li
Your sadness is a continent, she said;

                                                             you are the frozen north.

In winter, where I was a child, the soil turned to stone. The wind crept

Over it like old news from the Steppe

                                                             and wept; the underworld was the whole world then
And the only word it knew was grief. If my sadness is chthonic, I think; if

It’s ten feet deep and chronic, it must be yours,

                                                                              or it might be the world’s,

                                                                                       and some of the news is good:

For summer’s here, and the world is warming, and

                                                       the days to come may be the (un)making of us yet.