Sunday
"Know this: he was a changed man
when he first returned - more solid
than the walls he walked through;
his words boiled love in my heart.
He wore his wounds like totems."
She's changed, too. No longer
the little woman - scarf-bound,
lip-taut seeker, lost. She hunts
like she hires: with crisp bills
on wood she measures my worth.
These are good notes. I measure
my questions accordingly: who
and where, and how. Not why -
the curves of her black-sheen
calves supress my need to know.
There's no noise outside, no wind
to swirl the street litter in dance,
no midnight trade, no dogs. "He's late,"
she tells me. "The world can't sing out
its rattle-tunes if he won't come home."
"Know this: he was a changed man
when he first returned - more solid
than the walls he walked through;
his words boiled love in my heart.
He wore his wounds like totems."
She's changed, too. No longer
the little woman - scarf-bound,
lip-taut seeker, lost. She hunts
like she hires: with crisp bills
on wood she measures my worth.
These are good notes. I measure
my questions accordingly: who
and where, and how. Not why -
the curves of her black-sheen
calves supress my need to know.
There's no noise outside, no wind
to swirl the street litter in dance,
no midnight trade, no dogs. "He's late,"
she tells me. "The world can't sing out
its rattle-tunes if he won't come home."
I'm thinking these last three could be gathered together into a 3-part poem, perhaps under the title The case of the man who was dead - what do you both think?
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