Beauty and Sorrow of an Unmade Bed

In the universe before this one
we each float in the amnion,
night swimmers without a star to guide us.
In the next world light, a brightness we didn’t expect,
the light that opens and closes
certain wild flowers in one day;
light spreading like brush fire
through the tall grass of our dreams
blown down and scattered,
where we circle and tramp spreading our scent,
marking a niche for the night,
inviting the wild totems of our tribe.

It is always winter when our naked hands
part the cold sheets and we climb into the white envelope,
smoothed and sealed with our own hands each morning.

In the pale night garden we till with our hands,
the same garden we tended each night as children;
attended now by lovers
whose hands could pass for our own,
we are risen light, light
following its natural course,
light like the sound of a tree
falling in the forest.

This morning we crawl out from the tousled sheets
leaving intact their folds and fissures,
a landscape specific as a fingerprint.
In the sepia tinged cave of my dreams
there is the vision of an unmade bed carved of marble,
a grove of leafless granite trees
marking a hollow darkness, the disappearance
of flesh and bone, the familiar
encroachment of light.