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"The earth/did not take seed/that year
for Demeter/in her beautiful crown/concealed it."
--The Homeric Hymns
Naturally, you’ll take her on the underground:
to Newcastle, you said, in Percy, Maine.
A dark place, but according to you
there is light. Small clouds in a blue sky.
A cottage-house the way she’d imagined:
dog at the gate, green and flowered grounds.
Nights, I dream of her in a meadow, extravagant
marriage of light. I say, "Don’t go too far"--
but seduced by all those flowers, she finds
herself in a field, terrain of strange grass,
slow landscape of your alien song.
In the end, I come upon the burning blossoms,
mandala of scorched earth where her light had been.
It did not surprise me then: the wedding
deep in the city, under the constant shade
of skyway, logo of formal maroon. I noticed
your tall angular body, disguise of blonde,
the shining fire you made to draw her in;
how you delivered your long bones into the
fine space between this daughter and me,
how your brilliant eyes narrowed in the light.
So there must also be a depot: bricked building
on a gray platform, the steel-grille window
for her fare; although it is you who will take her
into the world, into the silver train,
its plush immaculate green; the tracks arranging
into a single line, pointing away.
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