My Last Dance

She sang the forty-four madrigals of night
and the forty-four canzonettas of day.
She played a mean violin.

She said
twice is more than we deserve.
She said it twice.

She bought my shadow for a kiss.

She bought my shadow
and poured it in the river at St. Louis,
and I waited under the Vicksburg bridge
where the pylons rise like Solomon's pillars.

I bare-hand fished my shadow from the shallows,
and it fought me like a channel cat,
my fist in its throat. I wrestled my shadow,
and she played her cat gut violin on the muddy shore.

She cut on those strings and sang
the forty-four canzonettas of day,
the forty-four madrigals of night.