Full as Opera
Before first light strikes the windshield
And you are stirred into waking. Before
The caw of crows. Before the animals
Knew to move through the forest—
Dank and dark, you had a vision:
There was a girl in a conflagration
Of branch and ash. She wore a straw hat.
Her dress said she lived in some ago.
When she was nervous, she twirled
Her whole body until collapse:
Her bones giving out, birds protesting
Above, clouds erasing stories
Set in star. Always she lived with this
Suspense, the way time separates
Itself from place until—
There she is, suspended
Again, displaced by tense
Shifts and wandering vowels:
Her mouth seems between sounds.
And she spins, as though in spinning
She could name Night
Some round word like Found.
|
|