Between

Atonement is our kitchen window

the world falls through sleepless

and wild, tiny slaughters

lining the yard. How memory lies

like the moon: silkrose from a distance,

shot by dream, a child lifted into

next year and the next. You write of Spain’s white-

moth hill, the caves, and between us

an ocean same as the moon, sheer belief.

My desire rolls like a blind man in the side yard.

Tell me you carry it dustily up streets,

the little church, the saint head blooming

in a box. Our street, named for a woman and the wind,

terrible gifts of history—

I remember. Leaving,

your face was the smallest ever, the weather

in a rose. And then

the earth’s soft grind through

the keyhole, quiet between

the foot and the still-flapping wing.

One story of love is the story of the cliff

and the ship that tries

over and

over like

snow at night, the bride unfolding forever in a black

limousine.