Each Window Its Moon
Each window its moon,
and a thousand lakes around here
each wearing it like a medallion.
The spirit of a woman haunts me
as the starlings head for home
and I just want to go down by the river awhile
and sit among some companionable bones
while the daylilies tender their buds
to the hot night air, and the river runs by me
without any notion of what I see in it.
No waterlilies yet, but the wild irises
are protruding out of their blue green sheaths
like cartridges of lipstick, and the clouds clear
and the stars get me thinking about her again,
and all the tender lucidities held in abeyance
I would say to her if she were here.
My heart startles me and jumps like a fish.
The fireflies play a game with me
where I have to guess what constellation
I'm in now as they ricochet off the water like a starmap.
She's beautiful and bright and dangerous
as a witch in heat, and she's been hurt so deeply
she loves the stars the way I do because
distance is a guarantee of their innocence
and she uses her pain like a weapon
on behalf of other people who suffer as she does.
Who hasn't been wounded deeply by someone they loved?
Who hasn't thought of suicide in a bus station washroom
where the mirrors won't leave you alone with yourself
long enough to think of a destination
that isn't bleak and unknown and against the way
your heart's aching to go, you go, you just go
as you throw the face you just wiped off in the trash can
and try to get on with a life that's over?
And once the scars have healed what they could
the terrifying blandness of a world that tramples
on the absence deep within you everyone ignores
by whipping your heart with advice, as the leaves
are hair braided like feathers into the tresses of the willows,
clarity, peace, and a solitude that understands you
better than anyone else can, one afternoon
in a backyard somewhere, sitting alone
in the shadow water of the maples and black walnuts
inundating the grass as the sun goes down,
when you least expect it, resonate with your awareness
of being lost, but delighting in the fact you can't be found,
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
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