Her Sadness

He held her. She was sad.

And nothing could disguise

the mist upon her eyes.

Yet every way he spoke

seemed only to evince

the sense that something bad

had happened in her night.

The room was full of light;

it settled on the flowers

beside their bed, the sheets

illumined by the sun.

He knew of all the powers

beyond what he could see:

the current of her dreams

wherein she had been whirled,

for hours tossed and churned.

“I love you,” he might say,

but she would turn aside

and bite her lip to chide;

the most he could provide

was skin against her skin

and silence like the moss

that covers with green fur

the sharpest, rasping ledge

in time. She wept alone,

an island in the creek

of all his running love.

By noon, when they had slept

an hour past her tears,

they went outside. Her fears

had blown off like a fog

from that disconsolate shore.

They walked, now hand in hand,

and nothing more was said.

It was as if the dead

had somehow been subdued,

at least until that dark

came down on her again.