Timothy Sandefur

Osiris
   Isis by Nile’s fruitful stream 
   With wildered steps her fair Osiris seeks.
     -Porphyry, as quoted in Eusebius, Preparation for the
      Gospel (E.H. Gifford, trans.)

I found another part of you today
shining on the riverbank; blurred.
It looked like something nearly there, but not.  

It was clear and thin and deep, and it
faded just when I had almost caught it. 
They often do.  I think it was your hair,

or laugh, or maybe how you’d rub your chin
sometimes when you would smile.  I wasn’t fast
enough to grasp it, or if I was, it slipped

between my fingers toward the hills.  Worse:
I thought I had a dozen other fragments
locked away, but then last night I found

that one was gone.  I can’t tell which.  I counted
out the ones I had: your favorite song--
your hands, of course, soft and worn--your fear

of heights (although that’s getting dry)--your love
of cats--that day we found that purple shell--
a couple rings, now thin with age.  I even

have (can you believe?) the way you always
mispronounced the name of Djer.  I know
it’s weird to keep it, but I found it on

the surface of a smooth and silver stream
one moonlit night in Thout. I wasn’t even
looking; it floated by, and I just

dove right in.  Ever since, I’ve kept it
in my chest.  I cannot let it go. 
I’ll search again tomorrow, I know.  I’ll scan

the leaves and river-bends for a piece
of you that I can keep away from storms,
and ask for time to make us whole once more. 

Timothy Sandefur is an attorney in Phoenix and the author of several books on legal and historical subjects, and a book of poems called Some Notes on the Silence, which was published by Kelsay Books in 2022.