We always sleep with curtains drawn,
in the soft blue light of morning,I rise and pull the black velvet tight.
You stirred, then stretch your hand back to my thigh
our bed a ship in sleep’s doubled plunging
wave upon wave, until as though a lighthouse
beam had crossed the room: the crystal vase between
the windows suddenly ablaze, a spirit,
seized, inside its amethyst blue gaze.
What’s that? you whisper. A slip of light, untamed,
had turned the vase into a crystal ball,
whose blue eye looked back at us, amazed, two
sleepers startled in each other’s arms,
while day lapped at night’s extinguished edge,
adrift between the past and future tense,
a blue moon for an instant caught in its chipped
sapphire—love enduring, give or take.
The Winter Bites My Bones 