=

A cortege: birds
painted flying in opposite directons—silence.
You said another person's grief, seen
through a window

as a white animal waiting, and fabric ripped
and hanging in the damp trees, as if a way
of avoiding being moved—from an arm,

dangling, that ornament, memory
of clipped wings—some pearl in which

I saw you looking at the white deer

of that grief: stared at you so long you were
waiting outside in the trees

by then. Our cars follow each other's lights in the fog.

Copyright © 2006 Lightsey Darst All rights reserved
from The Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission