Our own hands are never pure enough.

Take the moment we’re living in, the traces
of words just inches from your lips.

the wild things and planted the peaches and the rest
   of the late orchard that is dry wood covered with moss

my limbs down through dark rocks calling to the summer
   where are you where will you be how could I have missed you

It’s slippery, the little by little you’re left with.
thread of a peacock in profile
glimpsed on a chimney,

His shadow in the frescos
Is the first admitted
Into a picture. Before this,

And so I went forth, exhilarated
in uniform: worn-through jeans, muscle tees,
stripped of bras and ancestral history.

It was white I wanted —of snow, clouds, of sky overcast, of
       a star if you take the shine from it. Usual
           sound, light, and I wake—but sense a shift

invisible beam that wells up and bursts from its
   unknown star on on on never returning

A woman of wool lies on a couch covered with pale shawls.
The way it holds her, she and the couch are almost one.
Cold fingers the shawls but she is warm. Though gravely ill.