MUJO

You try to remember the last time you touched her.

You look at hares coupling, the pureness of that,

the buck falling away insensible,

and the wail of the doe just before she licks herself.

Or the eye of the hawk who died in your hands,

somewhere her eggs cold among sticks and bark,

the thrush who tried to lift his dead mate from the road.

There is no word for the skin high up the inner thigh,

for what lies beneath the lobe, the under wrist

where veins and tendons grow in fragile sprawl.

You say her skin was another texture, ice petals,

her bones white willows moving inside snow,

but that is like dragging a grey wing across cement.

You lie in the dark, your cheeks dry.

You know what her skin was, draped thin over bone.

But there is no telling anyone. A thrush maybe, a hare,

or a meadowhawk, that thin creature arranged on glass.