For N.H.
I return to the city and find frogs, rainbows underfoot,
King Arthur's steeds on the rocking chair.
Her house is a dripping scatter and spill of children.
They grow so quickly, eyes from gray clouds
to warm blue stars to green stones.
In my absence, they have learned to speak and bite.
Their bodies are small, messed, perfect.
They turn their faces up to me, bare teeth
like fresh rows of corn.
They cry: scraped chins, a comb
twisted in hair, arms caught
in the snare of a sweater.
Then she draws anger out of them
easily, her voice a silver straw.
I arrive and hug her Pablumed shoulders
for just a moment, movement constant,
the kettle shrieking in the kitchen
and the little one waking
in a nest of furious hunger,
and here are the poems by Lorca,
she says, tossing me paper like trick pigeons,
disappearing down the hall
reappearing with Alexander,
a gold brook sliding from the ledge of her hip,
slipping off into a jungle of puppets and dinosaurs.
She is laughing now, stirring tea,
remembering my sugar and not dropping –
Dammit! she shouts, Something is burning–
anything, not cutting her fingers or crying
but humming among the half-eaten cookies and carrots.
When she finally sits down at the table,
children trot back and forth like small exquisite horses.
She feeds them apples from her hand.
We scald our tongues with tea.
We discuss Byron and the beauty of trees
and the British Museum and the way the world
repaints itself while you lie awake in bed,
listening to the brush strokes in your blood,
breathing the certain silent heat of his skin.
Through the wall, she says, I feel the children dreaming.
Later she drives me home through black nets of rain,
fingers like gnawed leather on the steering wheel.
It's the dishes, she chuckles, I am 68 from the wrists down.
Something is burning.
Even in this wet desert, lives burn.
She takes the light, the clarity of children's tears.
Her hands kindle the clean fire of words.
I lean over the books in my lap to kiss her goodnight,
greet again the sudden blade of cheekbone,
the scent of cold white skin.
I rush through rain to my door
with sparks still on my face.
How she surprises me, this woman
I have come, stumbling,
to love.