Hylic

It's been going on so long
It can't matter where you start.
Life, it is authorless, but
Wonderfully productive
Of authors. More, Rose, I can't
Begin to tell you. "Begin"
Is itself the great untruth.

Every origin leaves out
The origin. There is none.
Or, if there is, it's not ours
And not ours to say so. So,
Rosa Ventorum, I wrote
Your name as an amnesia
In my mother's nursing home,

A quarter-century gone
Ago, before I thought much
About the moths in my own
Accruing hoard of tales, books
I already mourned because
They had mildewed--cheap wood-pulp
On my plywood shelves.