I walked these roads once, two steps
Behind my own life, my pockets stuffed with receipts
For goods I’d never asked for:
Complacency, blind regret; belief;
Compassion I recognized in the left palm;
Respect, slick stick, in the right:
One I have squandered, one
I have sloughed like a cracked skin; the others
Small charms against an eventual present,
I keep in the camphor box
Besides my handkerchiefs, the slow roll
Of how I’ll unravel, signatures.

Charles Wright, from “Sky Valley Rider,” Oblivion Banjo (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019)