Regalia for a black hat dancer

though I was hollowed out by pain,
honeycombed with the emptiness of it,
like the bird bones on the beach
the salt of the bay water had worked on for a season --
such surprising lightness in the hand--
I don't think I could have told the pain of loss
from the pain of possibility,
though I knew they weren't the same thing.

When I think of that time, I think mainly of the osprey's cry,
a startled yelp,
the cry more a color than a sound, and as if
it ripped the sky, was white,
as if it were scar tissue and fresh hurt at once.


by Robert Hass.