Two Children

I: the child

the aura of a fossil is an oscillation,
a speaking upwards of colour and light that
runs into waves of whispering.
this throbs from her small white knuckles,
gripping, owning, closed.
her hat trailing from the other hand,
the ribbons: pink papyrus, thin in the wind.
her hair a sheaf of taffeta palely battered
in the hot november.

I open, I close my mouth. the sound
of my love is a beaten hoof, a struck
red sheath of forming steel.
it rings, it clangs, it is ugly and hot in the world.
for her, I must will myself
useful and fierce.

II: the miscarriage

the glass is a vase, may as well be.
it is a lost crystal boat on the varnished
immensity of mantle and wall.
the mildew chases the shadows,
the blacknesses tussling for place.
the canvases stare flatly -
all moving beauty reduced to line.

I bleed, my womb an opening eye
of unexpected biological candour.

I would have let her lie beside me;
I would have hounded fevers down.
I would have stood between her door
and the advancing crowded neon earth.

Despite all my weaponry,
I bleed.

Oh stopper me up, stopper me up
at the centre and third eye.