spring

NOW THE LIGHT

Slow children at play the sign reads.

And me a slow child
beneath the sequined sky.

This light won't ever stop
coming. I've asked if love is
a religion, if its theology
is the thunderbolt,
the light on the road to Damascus.

The erasure of your name.

On his porch a man answers policemen,
clutching the red fragments
of a hummingbird feeder,
his face a fragment
red with blood.
It's his blood I'm thinking of now.

Later I'll think
of the nail I lost to a thorn.

Or the eleven miles I drove
to reach that hotel
that summer
that other life.

Through the window was proof
we would never leave
the south:

a wire fence rimed in rust
and through it wound
a burden of honeysuckle
beside the silent road.

To the glass I pressed my face to see
if the odor of that vine
could breach the glass,
if there was perfume in the world besides your own.

All my nose knew was you
that whole night
sleeping like bread.

Once I dreamed you were clouds
and once I dreamed you swam away.

It was morning.
Now the light
is different,
is late, is.