On Seeing the Place Where I First Made Love

It all looks so narrow now—the house,
brick sidewalk buckled over maple roots,
Marlborough Street, a strip of pewter sky
wedged in above, everything unchanged
since nineteen sixty except for scale.
That, and the play of light.

Once endless, sun-lit, sky and street
outside the front bay window.
It was May. Magnolia petals, soft
and wet as sleep, heaped on the bricks.
Magnolias cupped erect on branches.
We would lean out and touch them.

Skin, rose-red folds of the body,
bones and moving veins beneath.
We memorized each other
and knowledge led to a promise
that, by its very nature, failed.
But we left that house believing.

 

Poems by Sharon Fain: