Iris' blues for her painter

before the words if only—
before the world of could be—

      there the long sun-beaten grasses
drew us far into the fields
          you reached out for my hair
and I was already smiling,
turning partly teasing you with
your weaknesses
       running away but not far

you drew my hair
in dozens of sketches
so many erasures
so much charcoal
stained your soft fingers
till you could trace each curve and angle
each hollow and rise
where you made the light hold me
            the grass sheltering us like a cradle—

someday there could be
a well for us to draw upon
     where we could see ourselves held still
as if the water could bear our images
while all we want
                             disturbs them—

the world sands through
my fingers
pouring

my body sands away

who throngs my hiddenness
my drivenness—

when my lips in your neck sink
and you vibrate deeper in
holding me harder than I can stand
we say nothing will say nothing will forget
will never say it
when you rub against me
accidents open

my hope my loss
knowing how it is

mystery repeats itself
to those who remember

so i must forget
and reap it anyway

what if this world is what we are afraid it is?

now these off-white skies grow hard—
winter in the fields of swamp grass

bows the brown and umber blades
flashing yellow-green like corn silk
            but sharper shrill

                        unlike that black-glass flow
so utterly still
it once mirrored dusk's slow coming
while the slightest wing
bent the spreading tops of seeding grasses
their stalks more tall than our bodies
could ever be

even if we walked across the if
that strands between us

and the if that is us

the tawny grass tips
brush away the sky

and we are the shadow
in a wave rolling so purely
the eye aches at its beauty

the charred sky behind the rainbow
that is
so in the iris' blues
so in a flame

First published in XConnect Vol. 6, Issue 21, 2004 at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect. Free audio of this poem may be found here.