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MOMENTS

Winds blow in the same bare place 
as though this northern reach
were all that's left of earth.

Sun skids on frozen
surfaces and fog
chokes off all sound.

A snowflake resting in a child's 
palm makes of her life
a simple moment. This

moment's
emptied of all memories 
but one.

PICKED CLEAN

Raspberry time's in August
when the difference between
sun and shade grows more urgent.

We plant pails in moist earth,
reach for loaded branches and part
them like tangled skeins of hair.

Leaving unripe berries
to drop and rot, we pluck
those rich to bursting

warm from the sun,
rub them across our lips
to smudge in color

slip them in our mouths,
fruit and teeth and tongue
in juicy unity.

As we strip branches,
nothing's in sight 
but leaves and sky.

Brambles cross-hatch arms
and the world contracts
to the bottom of a bucket.

Returning, we empty brimming 
pails into sun-streaked bowls
on the veranda. When night 

breathes us in, we stop
and look back at August
picked clean.

WET WORLD

Expect a certain absence in me
during winter. I still inhabit
those bronze days down at the pond 
with the sun grafted to my knees.
It is everything that wet,
green place. Reaching into it,
I discover the water inside the water
and hold that liquid world between
my hands. Guided by invisible springs,
the body dissolves like a wafer on the tongue.
The depth that drowns supports me,
water's my protection against water
and one ripple return me to the shore
to lie full-length and mindless 
tasting of sun and sweat and me.

UNTIL DAY TURNS INWARD

Sleep strips you down
and all the little deaths
flow between us. I
lift your sleeping hand,
feel its weight rise 
up into my arm and run
my fingers down your palm
tracing myself back into your future

Now content to lie against
each other in perfect isolation,
a pair of bodies
with nothing sudden here.
The strong pulse of morning
beats against us,
confirming all the old miracles.

Your shirt, the color of smoke,
hangs on the closet door, a semaphore
signalling morning. I imagine
its curved distance to belt's boundary
along ridge of bone, your fingers
precise on buckle and button,
the soul of propriety . Unbuttoned,
it shapes desire.

And deep in the closet 
behind dark curtains of breath,
our clothes hanging side by side 
mingle inconceivably 
intimate.

SMALL INVASIONS

A double thickness of days bound together 
with double seams, one stitched and gray 
and visible, looping threads of the other 
into the weave until early morning's 
shot through with spurts of green. 

At the first sunprobe, small deaths 
surface. Winter's cuts and slashes 
heal at the slightest sign of green and 
fertility's the width of a dirt-stained thumb.

The raw yoke of the sun smears
mouths and chins as birds hanging on drafts 
shatter the air with clues. Buds 
nipple up from branches and a slow rain 
scars the afternoon. 

Drip sounds of spring
mingle with the rhythm of running water
leaves scattering grace notes
and the breeze teaching April to sing cuckoo.

© All Copyright, Ruth Daigon.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.