1.03.2022

the velvet darkness before dawn

Early evening honey and whiskey, that sweetness, 
bees in the ever-blossoming tresses 
of your hair, darling, the touch of a hand 
like water in a parched man's cup, 
 
the way memory chimes its silver-stringed guitar 
like moonlight on a spiderweb, 
milkweed stalks against rusted-out pickup trucks, 
their wandering seed our only constellations, 
 
bells in the velvet darkness before dawn, 
that mystery, that consolation, 
worn-down paths we walk fortified by trust in simplicity 
and cans of beer in wind off the soon-to-be-planted fields. 
 
O let us reseed the garden and eat vegetable soup 
and never go to town, not even for bread. 
Let us inhabit this moment forever and ever. 
Live with me always in the scrap heap of my heart.
 
[Campbell McGrath {1962- }, "4. Luz Australis" from 'Four Love Poems' in Nouns & Verbs]

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