Untitled, London Bellman
Behind the Adobe House
I.
Green absorbs the living things
that venture through the garden.
Even butterflies are pulled
from flight
and fence posts, propped against each other
years ago, cadence
the broad-leafed staircases
of climbing vines.
A speckled chicken writes
its message in the mud.
Within the house the walls are dark,
the screens crisscrossed with shadows.
I lean against the heavy sill
and listen to the branches
take the breeze.
Along the fence, huge flowers
float their violet screams.
II.
This morning in the pale half-light
that precedes dawn I rose
and sat beside my woman while she slept.
Her face, in shadow, seemed to sink
into the past and for a moment she and I,
hands linked, ran through blooming clover.
Tripped, and as we fell
her hands gripped mine,
her eyes threw me
the flowers of her dreaming.
________________
Robert Stout