years from now, nobody I know
to look at the world through it, day
and night sliding into each other.
EATING OUTSIDE
Fat pine boughs
droop over the vegetable garden's
sticks and leaves,
the moon's hazy face comes and goes
in the heat.
Beautiful women,
your skin can barely be seen.
The moon's gone. Clouds everywhere.
A pale hand curls
on the tabletop next to mine,
there's talk about work and love.
We're like the moon at this hour
as clouds swallow it or dissolve so
it glides through the shaggy limbs,
full, like the grief inside us,
then floats off by itself
beyond the last tips of the needles.
The trees are quiet. In the house
my daughters play the piano and laugh .
The family dog races in and out howling.
I keep trying to explain what we feel
but when I go back, like now, there's
the red hammock, the barbecue guarding
the lit back wall like a dwarf,
the self, awed by changes,
motioning to us as it leaves.
The candles on the table have blown out,
the upstairs lights are on.
Deep among those black arms, it pauses
clear, white, and unseen.
Stephen Berg
