Still to be done, a few last Sunday night chores;
washed clothes to be folded and put away,
trash to go out. Simple doingness,
the respite of tasks. Bats are grazing fields
of air, a hoot owl calls in the back woods.
Visible from an upstairs window, the cloud-caught
glow of an end-of-summer carnival goes
suddenly black as all else. Must be children
caught on the ferris wheel. Palms slide down
banisters to the candle drawer. Nothing to do
but go to bed. The world is as dark as it ever was.
Wind is awash in the music of trees. We rest
in one another's arms but there's no spark
between us tonight, nothing to kindle,
so I voice a memory and you voice another,
and we go back and forth like this, surveying
in deep enclosing darkness, the turns
circumstance and promises have given us.
We seem to be drifting together everywhere
and nowhere at once, then the old impression
of eternity sneaks up, that vivid mercurial
feeling of before-and-now-and-again-and yes
love, you, and yes love, me - somehow, forever,
we're sure of it. Or perhaps this is only human,
unable as we are to imagine not being, or an end
to our love, the sense of a saving, needed haven,
ours when light has failed and we're in the dark.
