from NER 41.1 (2020)
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Going now to dark, going now to write in the dark
love-cabinet. The red fish like a stuffed glove on the desk,
going out of gray all the time, gray seeping back. I like Beckett
when he scoffs white and black. Going in out of light in out
of my undercover love. Now seal the window. Our smells already flown—               
         soft flowers of air or ash-tufts undone. The sound inside
the walls a heart. There’s the night in your voice again, snakewood
alive in the hearth. Nobody spoke when the smoke rose. I’m going now
to dark. Going to lift the coverlet and feel your face there even when it’s
not, going with my solo hand inside to still a willow
by its thirsting root. There’s another page of light—all trees are stately—
          I don’t care how slovenly some think they seem, snagged by fishline, straggling roots half-drowned, bruised knuckles with a tight blue sheen—
all trees are venerable citizens and are divine. I head into their dark
love-cabinet with you, a morning of roughshod stone in out of
the dark love past the last bright bursts of thready lavender-blue
asters before we disappear again.
          Going now to write in the dark. I feared your heart
was footfall down the hall, someone or something trying to undo
us. Watch us watching the autumn trees in the wind laughing and losing pieces of themselves. We are alert and high and bright, carrying the air well, carrying the air not on a stretcher
but in our hair, its high bright pieces in our hair. Beckett
          was correct—he was inching back into gray when it fled. Where the dark is
now, we lay on a slab of wood in the sun. Where the dark was then,
now a lit glade, love-cabinet
          we are tendrils of light in the dark of it.