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Poem Details
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| Title: | By the Fire |
| Author: | Carol Dietrich |
| Date Submitted: | 6/9/2006 |
| Poem: |
Even on these quiet nights I think of you; the clock of birds and pine ticks on my wall. I listen for a while, and then I see you glancing at the silent face and two hands moving underneath your chair. I watch my wrist to let you know it’s time to go—-the blue vein pulses by. On these October nights the moon is round and generous and gold. To think of you alone is not a lunar phase (or that to wish upon). I turn to do my work unfinished in a pile as firewood, dry and ready for some open hearth. No, this moon tonight is an ember, untouchable as you, cooling in a charcoal sky. Your fingers slide across the paper you’ve printed out ahead of time—so orderly and neat and empirical, so unlike the meaning of what is left, unsaid. And I—-I sign and gladly feel what is allowable: a paraphrase, an imagined particle of the divine, the brilliant Braille of nighttime’s sky. ... |