Triptych: Abiquiu Lake

Patricia Killelea

Your looming touch, there on the shale banks —

fingers holding taut the loose

strands of my body, lacing all my parched

cells into reassembled patterns

there beside the basin made legible by rains,

there beneath the silt of your catalyzed hands;

Now the word for crow pierces blue

reservoir air, comes to perch on our dark arms

entangled and where I’m learning how to hold

your unfamiliar shape atop hot silica,

grafting my ingrown heart to your orbiting cheek

as monsoons sprout wings inside our ribcages;

Finally here — inside of dusk — our sky’s chromatics

falter when clouds amass to mask

even the crow’s bright word for us.

In lieu of perfected sunsets, I raise to one zenith

an unobstructed kiss as your eyes tilt northward,

where already a half-moon climbs

above the red clay, braiding the black hair of indifferent stars;