Diane Lee Moomey

The lights are going out, dear—one
by one. Circuits short—listen! the crack

of lines downed, drowned by water rising
...

Above the spare tire but below
the blower and its orange cord,
among the pruning shears, dog treats
and bags of bone meal; beside the hula hoe
...

I'm opening a Brie for you. I'll set
it where its shoulders, creamy firm, will slump
into the warmth of afternoon, and where
what breeze there is today will carry news
...

Beneath the borealis we are wrapped
in down and Dacron, glove in glove. Our love
tonight's an argument about Intent:
you name this radiance Divine, with rapt
...

You could, fed up
with red and blue flashing lights
and sickened by the siren howls
of human misery that never stop, could
...

No king came riding to the door this morning
dressed in cloth of gold, no magus robed
in deeper thought; nor shepherds, country men
with woolen robes askew from sleeping rough
...

But I remember every lip, and where,
and all the hands that ever cupped my cheek;
recall the day and season bringing each
and bearing each away: our mingled hair,
...

In the first world, the sun
rose only every other day and the moon
fell from the sky because
the gravity module worked
...

You'd drive me home the long way
through Nobleton and Kleinburg, their window-dark houses —
our own windows down, our summer dark, its colorless moon—
my lower meadow thick with fireflies,
...

It's not
that thoughts of being dead alarm
me, but that berries
bloom along my arms, created by the touch
...

has a wicker chair with yellow chintz
that's curved to fit her, cabbage roses curved
to fit her; mother's mother. Wooden floor
was red, then blue, then green, now red again
...

Across the yellow line, the childish run—
nothing to be done. The yellow bus:
the scent of school that lingers even here
so many miles from gaily-painted walls
...

A waxing moon, near full. Your patio—
camellia petals scattered at our feet,
the light, two shadows clear on yellow stucco
walls. Our speech—the cadences that nearly
...

So now— when silence reigns upstairs,
demanding voices stilled in sleep
and dreams, when in this bare
...

They say that like it's a bad thing,
like that double flame ain't just the best
you'd ever want, and you not knowing anyway
whether you're gonna last longer
...

No sign upon your ten white
steps, mica-specked, nor on the fossil
rock beside them; nothing
written on the bell that, ringing,
...

Oh sweet phalanges, bullied long and hard—
just one more mile—dear metatarsals beaten
into whimpers, tossed a bone. I promise
to polish all your nails. Red. Beloved
...

Wild things come down from dry hills
to land on rooves, and a ginger cat
slinks beneath a hedge.
...

I
Another night wind, wet wind bears
the breaths of owl and cougar, flings
pine limbs down, these crash
...

My skies have not seen kites since ones
we flew at ten, at twelve.
We climbed the hill above the creek — snow
might still be on the north sides of boulders — climbed
...