There are no photographs. I will recall
Our afternoons without assistance.
Time darkens every archive when it falls,
Except the heart, whose strange resistance
Lasts as long as anything. Still, a certain
Angle of the sun across the table
Will stay ours (there was no curtain
In that kitchen). Just like an old fable,
The furniture could speak and sometimes sing,
And moons came down at night to visit us,
Though rarely did they stay long. Birds took wing
Along a path of light, but left their chorus.

Grasslands Review, 12 (Winter 1995): 62.

© 1998 by K.J.H. Berland