Nadya Aisenberg
NATURAL HISTORY
Before we became fossils
we were merely caricatures
hardening slowly inward from the rim
so that when light broke suddenly
through sodden douds
it left no impression
just as earlier in the summer
we hadn't known how to fold in
the rainbows and luna moths,
clearly a visitation,
butjust carried on talking.
Then snow fell on our still-green
branches and we understood,
shuddered and pressed against the rock
our perfect brutal place
and the flesh
in its soft petitioning was overthrown.
Snow lies between the birches
like silence in the shell ofan imaginary egg
or the letters from the dead which are never delivered.
On the snow's crust glittering words
are sacrificed. Nothing can enter,
not moving sunligh and fresh water,
not even the frenzied bowing of strings
from the white woods of Shostakovitch.
Under them the maternal voice of silence
waits, intact,
and you and I are in it and of it
who had joyful hands and words like bread
we passed between us. We have become
the unaudible prayer of schist 0 ready
for a single skilled tap
from the mason's hand
to spring us without shatter.
