The Brooklyn Rail

Now everything is quiet, everything touches the dark.

I talked only to the overcoat spread out
the little basket with one apple left
to mild objects linked
to an abandonment outside us
but still within us, inside the night
not listened to.

Chorus

There was the room where fear and time revolved.
Where he stroked her back washing off every trace of breath with water.
Their bones shone in secret.
When they thought to make love
the moon raised the water in two different tides.
When she responded he was already far away.
He spoke, she was trying to reach him
the dog was barking in the wind. Dog and wind confused them both
and above all confused the person’s flashlight used to search for them.
Their love was engraved at that point.
She remained between the rocks and the sand.
The world turned red and the dog covered her knees.
Night and the Mistral froze them together.

Here for you who stop and listen–this detail though cold overwhelms me:

“They live behind a glass veranda. They warm each other’s bodies.”

The world outside our front doors

Outside my window, a man works.
He lives on the lowest floor of a house nearby, with windows half below ground
and a turned-on television that throws light like a fireplace.
The man is sweeping the leaves. He digs under the flowers
eliminates the caterpillars and the weeds
cleans the stairs one by one. One for each life that has passed on?
Who am I to think he’s sad, where my life ends and his goes on?
By now the one I love is silent. Oh, how utterly silent,
and slowly this silence has hatched angst in me.
“Have you news from home?” I ask. He shakes his head. We look at the leaves
perceive our different reds our different cleared spaces
and the branches point at us in different ways, to pierce us.

Space for summer fear

Deep in the July night
she finds a corner, a pen
a used envelope and tries
to write down a thought.
The house is the architect of her panic
every room the geometry of her fear
every brick composes an alphabet about ruin.
On the walls
sentences slide already constructed:
“Life is full to the brim.”
And, “Did you really believe it might happen?”
Unable to move, she imagines she’s doing the impossible
for which she was never born.

Through the half-closed door, a southern wind
seems to carry a promise.
Now she backs away
swallows what she was exploring
ignores it so she can stay as she was.