One Light - II

II
          The dawn was only grey,
          it was nothing to mention -- 
          Just a grey evening turned upside down.
          I know.

(Howards End:  E.M. Forster)

          Sweet-sharp and biting,
the night when plums spill slick
juice on our paths.

The old man totters up
the front steps to the house (inside,
his cane lazes its hour

against the crook).
He walks, woodless, flattens
a rubber sole against the stones --

then slowly, out of his primeval
dark, he stumbles --
a crippling light against the slabs.

Swift song,

that low, invasive siren bleeding
white, the brittle basin of his pelvis

needling the skin, aurora in disguise.
          Scythelike, that moment
between wonderment

and mourning, half-wakened
pain and closure of the eye.
Clear pupils flower as trout streams;

silver ferntips glint on mountain gaps
to sun-dry on the worn slopes,
calcite stiff.

          The body rocks, rocks upsway,
downsway, hammocking in August
under wings,

each day, papoose of cotton, linen
raiment, blue thread dyes.
          The body roots, roots down-

ward, duskward, stranger
to the motion of its dust, a hollowing
of bone-white summer

          between stars.

(c)Sofia Starnes     2008

from Corpus Homini

Wings Press, San Antonio, TX