The Field (6.25)

First, they say there is a great pain,
After which you grow tired.
Then, they say you feel warm,
One last time, before you go numb.
You are done when you close your eyes.

I sang for as long as I could
Before I grew scared
And began screaming your name.
I kept expecting you to call back
Down from wherever you’d flown off,

And add one young pine to the horizon,
One faint set of fox tracks in the snow,
Something – anything – for me to hold onto
Or follow to a place like the one where you must have gone
Where the ground is not frozen,

Where holes can be dug into the earth
For precious things to be laid gently down
And covered handful at a time with soft dirt,
And labeled for time immortal,
“Here lies my beloved…”

As if the word love were still enough for prefixes,
For stone and right angles,
As if all words will conjugate into a past tense,
Or as if you really believed, as I want to,
That the dead stay dead.

They fell all around me,
dressed like shavings of the moon,
Is that all you could spare?
These fragile hisses of silver,
These flakes of memories? So pale,

Not at all like the actual sound of your voice
Or your tongue and our hands
Which touched everything
Like we had invented dawn ourselves.
When I cried your name

Maybe it hurt you not to feel pulled,
Hurt even more than the gentle melodies
Before the screaming.
Perhaps that is why you did not respond.
Perhaps your voice making promises

Had found another ear
And was moistening it with tenderness?
Or perhaps you had cut off your own ears
And buried them somewhere under the vast sheet.
I don't know, you said nothing.

The field, it grew whiter and wider.
It shone like a blade in the night.
I searched in despair with my eyes for the edge.
I called a few more times before, exhausted, I sat down.
You did not say a single word.

I explained that I wasn’t shivering
Because of the cold, but perhaps you didn’t hear,
Didn’t hear me say it is a bit frightening
Finding your own tracks
Again and again in the snow,

As if you have been talking to yourself
For days without realizing
You are alone.
I began imagining I could feel
The warmth of your breath

Which blew off the tops of drifts,
Yes, when the wind blew, there were white caps.
We were sailing a soft arc across them,
We would reach the end, the edge.
I began to imagine the rose petals, and how they would fall

Around the stone when I found it and laid myself down.
They would burn bright red, like phoenix feathers, like fire.
They would run deep and smooth as blood.
I could see them, still warm, whispering down through the earth
To your buried ears, deaf with dirt, my love, my love...

I stopped asking, finally, is that all you can spare,
These moon shavings?
I stopped asking, where are you?
Everything had cracked into flames
The moon had turned brilliant orange

Like the head of a lion; the air roared like the sun.
I had to cover my ears with hands.
It was this bright in our first moment of complete nakedness
When we pulled together,
still electric green like new leaves unfolding around a bud.

The ashes floated down from you,
Gathering in the endless fields like angles.
Once more everything felt absolute.
That is when I squinted, pinching out tears of light with my eyelids, my love, my love.