I’ve folded them up and boxed them

(in a brown box, no more).

You’ll want no gloating, no

easy answers – Sentimental, I think

you’ll say – so I take my sunlit

paths of pine needles, my sugar-berried

friendship – and flatten and tuck them

into a neat remembrance

all for myself.

Their secret rides our own whistled word,

for this and every

bird’s a love bird.