I move my hand over slopes, falls, lumps of sight, Lashes barely able to be touched, Lips that give way so easily it's a shock to feel underneath them
The bones smile.
Muffled a little, barely cloaked, Zygoma, maxillary, turbinate.
2
I put my hand On the side of your face, You lean your head a little Into my hand--and so, I know you're a dormouse Taken up in winter sleep, A lonely, stunned weight.
3
A cheekbone, A curved piece of brow, A pale eyelid Float in the dark, And now I make out An eye, dark, Wormed with far-off, unaccountable lights.
4
Hardly touching, I hold What I can only think of As some deepest of memories in my arms, Not mine, but as if the life in me Were slowly remembering what it is.
You lie here now in your physicalness, This beautiful degree of reality.
5
And now the day, raft that breaks up, comes on.
I think of a few bones Floating on a river at night, The starlight blowing in a place on the water, The river leaning like a wave towards the emptiness.