From the Fishouse

It was March when Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary,
“that summer should be here again; and I still have
the faculty of wonder at it,” but the day of our pilgrimage
to 22 Hyde Park Gate then Kensington Gardens
was characteristically damp and gray.

I, for one, was grateful for that weather: without it
how would we ever have managed to leave Round Pond
where an elderly man handed crusts to a young boy
who then handed them to geese?

That was the morning of the afternoon we lunched
at the British Museum—I’ve checked my diary—
overlooking the crowds trailing fingers across
the Reading Room’s blue leather. I remember
the water sparkling in my glass, two anchovies
lying in a puddle at my bowl’s bottom, though not,
it turns out, what either of us had to say.

You wore jeans that day, a gray wool sweater. Had
already rehung your scarf by the time I photographed
you on the steps leading back down from the cafe.
In the picture, its black ends dangle before either
side of your chest, straight as the banner behind you
advertising a new exhibit called Living and Dying.