Three Poems for My Husband

How the autumn dawn burned through

the misty broods and settled down in fire;

how quickly the sun glittered my shadow,

how my shadow cried, a moment, with joy.

A light frost, a vision of light crackling

down the maples, down the tinder ash.

I was the good thief. I held my Love’s

sweet breath, his beautiful, intelligent gaze.

I closed my eyes and he woke inside me.

When I saw, he saw the inflamed world.

A bird sang deeply from the gutter eaves.

When I closed my eyes I was elsewhere.

I walked through the fire of his sleep.

My Love,

   tonight Fionnuala is your nurse.

You’ll hear her voice sing-song around the ward

lifting a wing at the shore of your darkness.

I heard that, in another life, she too journeyed

through a storm, a kind of curse, with the ocean

rising darkly around her, fierce with cold,

and no resting place, only the frozen

rocks that tore her feet, the light on her shoulders.

And no cure there but to wait it out.

If, while I’m gone, your fever comes down—

if the small, salt-laden shapes of her song

appear as a first glimmer of earth-light,

follow the sweet, hopeful voice of that landing.

She will keep you safe beneath her wing.

The moment the lark finally vanishes

into the spread green sky of the forest

is the moment you suddenly lift

your bruised arm up, over your body,

as though to show me the wing’s eclipse,

or the wing, or the season of your dream.

And even as your hand lapses silent

onto your chest, and your breath goes

sluggish, I am already watching your feet

prepare their slow first step under the sheet

as the last notes of sunlight fall quiet,

and you do not move again. My love,

are you a bird reviving in a summer field?

Was it the lark ascending that you heard,

a ghost among its shy-hearted tunes?

Yes. I heard the lark escaping, too.