Enter Over the Hundred Skies

Her eyes, drowning yeses, bells
idled in a cemented garden. My lady
touches symbols of sunlight, hands and voice unlike
winter's wick lean toward the hall where
I pluck raspberries along a cedar bank.

From the quickened doorframe, I turn back. Upon
a bright bridge
                she lay as a night                frozen entire
by the gloam of unpronounceable nouns. Cranes
wings cross. For a moment

the desk lamp's temple of light
mimics the soul of the other soul. I imagine

a limestone threshold, scattered scalps of a few trees,
blanched pages smoothed to forgetting.

It was only my beginning. Blackout days weightless.

We softened here at the midway's crossing. Swallows
scribbling flares led us.

Into the luminous wasteland no trouble followed -- there is love
that no love makes for place --
places swooned harrowing warns.

Places gone to us unless we go alone.