The Beginning of Things

The Beginning of Things

for Rus


Your west each
morning
gives doves--night

dissolved by torrents of
sun
and of doves--a

constant coo, coo
stretches into
your room. Here, no easy

song. Melody,
with its grace
note skitterings above

avoids these empty (rusted blades
of a windmill,
a radiotower, browned peak)

skies. It's only
doves, and you pull
towards my back,

pull back towards
sleep where you don't,
you tell me, dream. I doubt

daily--though here's
heat, body, the weakness
(giving in) to your scratch

and pitch, voice. Flesh
is grass. Rare
high meadow of which I

might dream?
Or meaning everywhere,
like the ache

of miles of desert, the beaten
armor of mountain? And doves
insisting, wherever

they are. Waves of alto and the
blue square of window holds
nothing tangible

again: flat light, jets
evaporating into
white, heat that stands

like a man with a sword,
this sudden need
for belief. My new love.

Soon you won't
even hear them. White
noise, you said and still

I listen. I hear
a steady
question, who?

Who are you,
narrow stranger? Trust me,
you said one night,

swung a heavy stick
into the hive-shaped tree
they're in there.

And dark bodies
flew upward
a hundred in one teeming cloud.



Connie Voisine
Posted over at Campbell Corner