A White Candle on a Wooden Table
the flame held steady.
I sipped red wine,
watching the waitress balance her tray,
watching the door swing open
swing shut
without anticipation
frosted candle glass
golden glow
frosted doors with winter's white beyond
and then a blur of red
I watched the door swing open
In you walked
I smiled:
no explanations:
as if we'd said
Paris in October
and met by chance in some cafe
they call such meetings chance
you spoke
the glass doors ceased to swing.
The cave is
not too deep, yet sheltered
one small tribe of singers.
Here they made tools, and there
they butchered prey. Water
came from the tiny stream nearby.
These signs, so fragile, still remain:
the sharp stone flakes,
fragments of leather,
the broken arrow shaft,
and ashes
within a circle of black stones.
With careful trowels and measures
we mark off
the squares that cut divisions
where there were only wholes:
two inches at a time we lift the dust,
but, though the cave has echoes,
not the songs.
These poems were published in the February 2006 LSA News, but the first was written in the early 1980s in Austin, Texas, and the other was written from the late 1970s to 2006 in Eugene, Coos Bay, and Austin.
©Harriett Smith