She Undoes Her Hair
I've forgotten your
name for the moment,
you should be glad.
Perhaps it's the air of calm
totality that possesses your face
as you lift your hands to your head
that makes of all naming lies.
Or perhaps the vision of last night
or the night before of your hair
streaming in the orange white blue
late autumn mackerel sunset there
above the lake
sits on the back of my eyes.
Last night the starlight rested in the lake
and I rested with mute gratitude
in the cupped soul of your fruition, woman.
Failing still to comprehend your mystery,
I followed you with wonder
as a solitary walker
follows a deer through the forest.
And as one side of the moon
yearns for the other,
so I yearned for you.
Now a chance ray of light from the moon
through the window falls upon your neck
explodes the infinity of flesh thereon,
and time itself is splintered
into slivers of glass.
This vignette is frozen
against the shattered flow of time
and against all things uprooted, flying insane,
nothing more still, more immaculate
than the slow, slow act of your hair
coming undone.
Never has silence been more palpable,
more at peace with itself
since God contemplated the creation of the world.
Now is not the moment for speaking
what this one man feels must be spoken
or need not, or what is better left unsaid.
Now not the time for springing words loose in the air.
as if they had no power and lodged nowhere.
Now for this one moment do I trade
the entirety of my stark march of days
up through shifting panoplies
of stiff eras now gray in liquid memory
for this giddy grandeur.
Now I contemplate the promise
given before all speech or history
when I heard your soft footsteps
in the shadow world before you came to me.
Now I anticipate the rising perfection
or your roundnesses, which glistening,
shall fuse all feeling,
melt soul and flesh together
in the moonlit arch.
A soft exhalation of the night
stirs the white curtains,
points to the dresser
on which there is a vase:
Alabaster. Perfect.
Unquestioning, I kneel
and pour white gardenias
into the well of your desire.