Rich Ives

 

A Summer Evening

 

With the grace of a small, quick bird in her speech,

she whispered past all that had been said of her.

And in this way she was touching

                                  as much as his heart would allow.

 

Could she expect the insistent bloom of mere words

to garden her entry into his afterworld?

                                                        After all, doctor,

haven’t you heard this dream before? Haven’t you

given yourself to at least one of these people?

 

Her finger traces the scars. She knows

                                                        she can’t stay,

peering into the past as if all the secrets

weren’t changing daily, stroking the wet nose

of a blind woman’s retired pet. And yet

 

I believe I have something the rest of the world

does not. And as I watch a swallow suture the air

cleanly to the air,

                        I think it’s so beautifully sad

that I still don’t know what it is.