Morning and Evening, The Second Day
For Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove
You saw the blood on my lips this morning
and ran away and hid among the cedars
by the river; and though I called all day
my voice came back on the wind.
With evening you came suspiciously, not knowing
the smell or name of death, but sensing it
in the stain growing
now in my flesh. By sunfall
you found me sitting washed by the fire
and your body stood up white as the waters
plunging where the cedars grow, your whole
desire a fountain wearing the face of stone.
But your shadow fell down before you, a dark tongue
lapping darkness on the ground in the fire’s glow.