this one desire of mine
saw her face in another man's wine.
I looked. She raised her arms
and moved her dance along,
tossing flowers to everyone
and spending herself in song.
She pirouetted past a window.
Surely no human hands
turned those pages.
That her face was soiled linen in that light,
like a jaw-clenched winter sunset.
That her lips (the palest blood-clots)
whistled again and again.
Hear!
A snake-heavy, dull-dusty voice
dragged yesterday like a corpse
onto tomorrow.
I died. I started again and all
will be repeated as before.
The frigid snickering of a frozen creek.
The night. The barn. The dog coop.
All the snowstorms of my youth.
There was present in her secret song.
Wedding wreaths crowned
the imagined mountains of Michigan.
And behold,
I'm so feebly mute.
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