Something and Nothing

In the month my brother began to love a married woman,
the month the lantana took all the heat of late summer
into its orange sanctuary blooms, bearing it, storing it
as if for some suddenly-cold October night, he let her be.

In a twilight in which we are told the stars are portioned
into patterns like goblets and horses and archers he slid
her photograph into a copper frame welded
at the edges with a darker wire melted against it
and in. And it became

something of untiring capacity, growing
like the miles of hollowed land stunned and crafted
so far before us the metallic light of morning
that we could never imagine
unmade the land,
then towered the rain down, centuries worth,

to make a lake of what was gone, desire in which he let
her be and waters where the tired
but living carp swim back and forth.

Cemetery

The plot-filled graveyard swayed with wind in its grasses,
yet dusked-down and tight, ruled,
the anticipatory lack inked onto whatever page
was left of us. We sat in the middle of it: trespass.
We laid down in the middle of it: falsity. When you touched me
I felt nothing, as it was in the beginning.
The day so beautiful it struck me across the face.

Copyright © 2005 Katie Ford All rights reserved
from Cairn
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission