Antihelion: Conception of the Yellow House

When there was nothing left to rearrange—
not hours, not food, not bed, not filigree
of the sound words made still hovering, estranged
from he or she who finally had agreed
the air, the many airs they breathed and were
were dead—and they became their shoes,
staring down in each other's sight like something
cowering from moonlight, the moon as big as a town
lowered upon a town, eye upon closed eye,
heart wrapped in its own singed shadow pressed
upon its other shadow, still, they kept
on pacing: omen and phenomenon, falconer and -ress
until the bird, if it was a bird, went blind
inside the hood. The yellow fire was its mind.

Copyright © 2005 Robin Behn All rights reserved
from New Orleans Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission