Everything*

You came one day andas usual in such matters
significance filled everything—
your eyes, the things you
knew, the way you turned,
leaned, stood, or sat,
this way or that: when
you left, the area around here rose
a tilted tide, and everything that
offers desolation drained away.

—A. R. Ammons
*This poem was found after the poet’s death on the back of an envelope from Helen Vendler, November 28, 1981.