The Lie
by Mary Lambert
Your slow descent southward,
untended, unmarked,
gathers darkness.
But your light seems
brighter for it--
Surely what I sense
is nothing.
But nothing is a lot sometimes.
The slow loss, like dripping water,
leaves smooth hollows
which fill with reflection but,
like the moon,
are dead.
Erotic, perverse,
this watching,
a winnowing of
infinitesimal loss,
like ice melting into
shape-shifting ambiguity.
A medium I cannot navigate!
Slowly, slowly,
by glint and half-truth,
the combination falters
and no longer opens.
Your walk is not the one I knew:
That clear step of integrity!
The integered momentum
loses its mystery
and the spirit of the gait
is lost.
Sun angles and I glimpse
the feared, grinning cadaver.
My heart caroms to
move past the spin
of tenuous fogs that
surround you
in swathed cashmere
softly caressing the
darkness that gathers
at your spine,
spotlighting your capped, white smile
which defies the dry rattle
that echoes the tap of
your shining heel.
Now, only a photograph
glossy with reflected neon...
rippling...
But in your silence, not one drip or tittle,
not one falling pebble speaks----
which would be
something...
Not...
Nothing.
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