The Complete Cinnamon Bay Sonnets
by Andrew Kaufman

3.

I am here now and writing--please listen,
is how the clear-eyed, peasant-bloused girl I once met
above a tarn and failed to talk past kissing
while we lay under the stars late that night,

began the letter, which, out of nowhere, came—
months afterward from the "spiritual center"
that turned out to be the New Hampshire home
of Reverend Moon's church. And two years later

it was she who startled me out of blankness
on a Manhattan street corner: No — forget
about the donation -- it's me, Denise,

and it was, until two men in suits led her
away, something unspeakably human that breathed,
startled, standing naked in clear water.