POEMS
Jane Miller
THE MATE TO THE PLUM
Shall I speak and light clouds?
May
I
see? Seeing,
is it the silk of nothingness?
Let dawn crumble
and be milk by noon .
Most brightly of all burned, my love ,
now with acres of chamomile that one doesn't win
but as if in a rain, open
with humid air what resembles me most,
shadows .
They have their little castles on them in full view,
curved
like mother has a time called evening.
• l '
,
....
I
have an idea this is the sea,
is the sea,
I
think, patience? .
I
think, this is time,
rock draped in black cloth,
and only last year
to have been in front of it. That
I
touch-
is touch so heavily judged?-
your heart under a shingle of the world,
you opened .
What if
I
am growing
back grief,
as when
I
leave off thought
of the vows you have kept to me?
I
find that once before
Or
else,
it's exactly as you said, long beach, walking to dinner, said,
to have a thought stops breath,
a month of one day
