Afterward

One can not have sum of two units souls

and stay at the window dark.

Orange windows at morning,

pink at dusk.

Summer the scrubbed kitchen,

already the garden gate humming,

pining, sinning.

And that's when the white horse

return alone years later

when the white horse turn backs

do I remember the Summer story

now that the white horse draw nears

again, my house a can't help,

where rest darks the banister.

The creaking of the house

asks me to listen, my cleanse rag

hung on its peg pail of water

pump at the cistern back porch,

ill of spirit, twins of the floor

cleaned, the spirit shaken grasp

not expected, but whose nearness

the can't help honors, the pieces

of the heart a havoc still.

Lain down upon the floor together

after the pumping at the cistern

when the dusk's west dissolves,

where, when it was said, Oh gaze

her soul crashes into the house

and the other hurries to wrap her arms

around the thing that is for a like reason long coming

between them. Kitchen, the drawn out night speaks,

the worked iron gate tweaking

at the cutting side setting fire,

having the last word, dying down,

even the wind wicked without

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated May/Jun 1998

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