Blue Egg

                       We perish – tho’ We reign –
                                               –Dickinson, 693

The night before you flew
   away, because I can’t commit
my life to pages,

I hovered in exhaust of dream
   above a lawn,
a restless chop – trees, pavillion tops –

teasing  my crux of limbs
   that even in sleep circled,
circled – watching for you –

 & I knew the self was Ought,
   the wind rifling the lilacs
anciently more true than any diary

of my body, so lonely for yours
   even before we met;
though with weirdly sharp eyes

I saw how, beneath branches, the witless
  alcove of a crushed shell
buoyed me with its desert swell of song.