Marriage

Even if the light go out; even if I’m told
“There’s nothing more” …
I’ll still remain. For one can always watch.

—Rilke

I stop on the back porch by the white birch logs
from trees topped to let the mountain in.
They’re stacked like bones beside the cherry logs,
smooth as eelskins, and cedar set on edge, fragrant and hairy.
Then walk down steps where snow melted to large
crystals loosens the stone. I leave the house
and feel the mountain whose reflecting white lifts it
higher than daytime, closer, closing in.
I am walking through the houselight on the lawn.
It’s getting colder. My shadow stretches, climbs a tree, and
vanishes. I turn. Look back. An upper torso passes across
and back behind the yellow glass. And suddenly
I don’t know who she is or what she could be doing.
The TV must be on. Its unearthly blue staining files
marked “Rentals,” “Life Insurance,” “Records,” “Mortgages,”
“Kids.” The cat bounds by; I’ve spoiled her hunting.
And somewhere behind the house, I’m told, Halley’s comet,
all dirty ice and stones, is heading for us. I turn
my back, walk further into the cold, nearly the cold
of space. The window’s empty now. Where has she gone?
We see a flower by the light it doesn’t want, a star
by its old ejected light. The past’s our present.
How long for the light leaving her to travel across the grass,
its loose waves snagging on bare bush and thorn,
to reach me standing now not on grass but
cracked cement of the floor where
the house used to be?