Breath her-age-then will gulp the still-rich smell.
The spice issues from bulb to bulb.
Her fluid hand enhanced.
Her radiance loosed the dormant tongues.
All dead hands are the same age: dead.
I note my own.
Last year, trembling,
they harvested hyacinths
for the graves' navels.
Has no one cleared away
that desiccation among the stones?
Another desiccation comes.
It
rains. The rain is young.
Elizabeth Spires
STONINGTON SELF·PORTRAIT
Old sinner, pilgrim of doubt,
today I had a vision of you, myself
in thirty years, sitting
in a rusted wrought-iron chair
bolted to the selfsame stony hill
I've stared at days now. The hill,
matted with grass, wildflowers,
only a stone's throw
from my bedroom window, the sea's door.
Gulls toss above it, like blown bits
of paper, the tide recedes,
and still no new moon rises.
An isolate figure, you pull
your sweater closer, tighter,
accusing the past, accusing the future
