Up where the invisible line
draws from this stone
to that imagined field,
where there was built
a world of fact
that begot more fact,
now history,
begetting ever more facts,
now contested history,
begetting truths,
now buried in the hearts
of my children
(who you do not know
except through me
because of you
and the way you held me,
coaxed me, cajoled me,
laughed with me),

there you once stood
as factual as this old oak.
There you built things
of your own imagination.
There you showed me those things,
gave them freely,
lavishly, with open-heart,
while history took the turns it chose,
pulling them back,
shifting the sand this way and that,
dissolving that true world
back into imagination.

But, here, see the children —
they are witnesses still.
It is written here.