ISSUE: Summer 2007
Every shadow carries its own,
but is too dark to see it—
as in the nautilus,
each turn of light
leads into darkness,
or the hall outside her bedroom
where we fought like children
about the disposition
of her possessions,
anger envelops love.
Recalcitrant as opals,
Mozart’s mother’s bones
are buried in the walls
of the Paris catacombs—
hers lay starched in the sheets.
It was harder
to make her love me
than to drive the stars
into the ocean.
I remember the wave-
cuneiform of her hair,
ridged like sand
above her shoulders, and in the rain,
how she looked
down through the pavement—
something to do with shame
and disengagement. Love
embraces anger, somewhere other
than where we’ve been—
light piercing the dark shade
of remembrance. Mozart’s mother’s bones
are buried in the walls
of the Paris catacombs—
how else is there
to bury this white, desirable death?
