|
|
I.
Show me your painted face
in the white and grey light of dawn,
imprint your soundless name
on the few, simple things I own.
We may walk, arm in golden arm,
across the fractured canvas of this place
toward the perfect dome
while light from a primitive source
begins to write the surface of the Khan
and the colors of the hills,
but at this hour the gates are closed
against our fragile prayers.
II.
I like this moment, and this,
and this. I have lowered my measuring stick
into the ancient water
where time divides in three and flows
coolly around our thighs. On the opposite bank,
rock without name, stories of old floods
whispered into stone. We may walk,
hand in hopeful hand,
across the forbidden bridge
like figures on a painted scroll
in the artist’s hush of noon,
but each of us must know we walk alone.
III.
Shadows collect in the crevices of rock.
There is a part of me that knows
we are each others’ best work,
for we have walked, hearts of grace entwined,
to the temple, hungry for a sign
that this is not the only path through time,
and although we come away
without an answer carved in stone,
just look at how the river flows
without concern for our desires
and how the temple sends its rapturous spires
aloft, into the saffron-robed, late afternoon.
Sara Berkeley grew up in Ireland and now lives in Northern California. Three collections of her poetry have been published in Ireland, the UK, and Canada: Penn (1986), Home-movie Nights (1989), and Facts About Water (1994). She is the author of a collection of short stories, The Swimmer in the Deep Blue Dream (1992), and a novel, Shadowing Hannah (1999). Her fourth collection of poems, Strawberry Thief, was published in Fall 2005.
|
|
