One Earring Left

One Earring Left

I came home without the other last night.

Gone, fallen off after twenty years of wear,

bought when being free was new,

after a lunch with wine,

a silver crane, with wings spread.

The moon framed herself in the center pane

of my bedroom window.

She may have known where my crane was,

but was content to stare dumbly at me

as I lay alone with his fingerprints still on me.

By morning light, everything has flown.

I shower and hang the earring

with the other mateless ones.

Why

Why

Futures or numbers,

angles or dollars,

signs or stars -

you think these have brought me to you,

but no.

The boy you were -

alone, on foot,

carrying your mother's groceries each week

in your boy's hands -

has persuaded me.



Amber

Amber

It's my story, too.

Old sap

surrounding something vague,

possibly precious.

Sublimation

Sublimation

She watches the man as he slices rare beef at his wife's table,

balancing the steel knife in his palm.

Feeling the weight and substance of her gaze returned,

her longing spools out its own story.

Leaving their home she moves carefully,

as if he were not inside her,

as if their musk were not rising like incense,

her tongue not running against the grain of his eyebrow,

his soft thumbs not twinned over her nipples.

At home, awake,

she hums, wipes counters, tends to the dogs,

notes each soft step of a fly on her arm;

quickened by the rapture of her own risen blood.

Wild Strawberries

Wild Strawberries

The strawberries we planted years ago

have decamped to live in the lawn.

They keep to themselves

except in spring

when they pop with the yellow flowers
I mow down.

Still they manage to bear

a bright fruit,

perfect, though inedible.

Drizzle

Drizzle

Dog lime in the yard.

A plastic bag open in her right hand.

A newspaper wrapper condomed over her left.

She knows the drizzle

oozes through the roof

of the house at her back.

A seeping pentimento of decay

emerges again and again

on her living room wall.