AS IN THE DAYS OF THE PROPHETS
Love took the words right out of my mouth.
Not the making of love, the clinging and plunge,
the tongue’s deep spiral, but the acts of days,
the sun up and down, the dish and the pot,
the light on the head of first one, then another,
the stairs unswept, the bed made, the light out,
the papers brought in, the bed cold, the money
paid out, the bulbs dug, the children reverent
at what came next, the rise and the fall
of coral and ocher, the folding and sorting,
the endless numbering of things, the walking
with babies in slings, in backpacks, in strollers,
then hand in hand, then the hand dropped,
and one of them next to my shoulder, eyeing
before I do, the hawk or the waxwing….
Now available from Slant Books
Cover painting by John Lockwood