Traverse.

Chagall, Aleko and Zamphira by Moonlight, 1969

NOT to REMAIN ALTOGETHER SILENT

All the time I kept you out of my poems,

you found a way into my body instead.

Instead of your becoming another word

for dove or wrist bone, owl or stone,

you’ve become the impulse that has me

raise cairns to mark my way. You’re

what all verbs traverse, a fuse for the urge

to look at what I can’t see within what I can;

also the stillness inside me as wind-riven

leaves are driven over the roof shingles

into the night. Kindled by earth and sky,

you’re the touch of a tongue on my skin,

contingent and mortal; and the shy

reluctant love of faithfulness to what I feel

when at times I think there are no gods.

You are in me what is crucial and crucible

when the soul, in its root-fire, lasers and welds

each fissure and craze line of my loving elusive,

if pervasive, you. How stark it is to be alive–

and, although absence is the form you take
in what we call the world, how durable ...

Margaret Gibson