I walked around the restored chapel
and I looked at the floor plan
on the castle ruins brochure.
Sure enough, the supports
stood–stone pillars–
right where it said they would be:
four columns and the flying
buttresses in between.
The brochure told how the mason
who restored the castle
used fragments of the original
and searched for the same kind
of stone in a quarry fifty miles away.
I brushed my hand over the pillars,
felt the patchwork rock
held together by three iron rods
that ran from the foundation
to the roof, and I thought,
“I have shored up these fragments
against my ruins.”
Some old, some new, and some borrowed,
clustered around a cord of three strands.
Breakfast, a kiss, your
black dress, that song we keep
hearing on the radio, the last cookie
that’s always yours, the model boat
we found in the antique shop.
This is really, really lovely. Thank you!