Friday Love Poem: Teresa Gilman!

In the Rooms of Evening

See here the shadow of her face

how it bends darkness into the shape

of her noiseless arrival at your door

amid feathers of nightfall, starry bollettos,

a thousand crickets chanting in unison.

Wait patiently  as she wrings the gold

of a late supper out of nothing

and feeds you, her calm hands holding

out morsels of blue fish, and pickle,

Smyrna figs, some tangy camembert.

She sweeps pale hands through falling dusk

to cull the the phrases of a quatrain out of night air.

She springs to life as you close the door behind

departing loved ones, the best in you

following them out into the dry fizz of eternity.

Imagine that she tells you how the shape

of your eyebrows fastens to her, how hair

curling behind the ridges of your ears lights up

her midnight spine,  leaves her lowing

in pastures of green stem brokenness,

her gown a storm of light, desire a  purple stain on her

long after you and she have parted.

[ published in Roses in the Sand, Your Hand, Foothills, 2006. ]

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T.G. writes poetry, nonfiction, and letters.  She has received prizes in the CNY National Penwomen’s poetry contest, Abacus and Rose poetry contest (Mus. of Sci. & Tech., Syr.NY), Rebecca Eddy poetry contest, and others.  Her poems have appeared in Kalliope, Just Us (Toronto), Comstock Review, Peregrine, Co-evolution, Illya’s Honey, Lake Affect, and others. She has two books of poetry published by Foothills, Fumbling for the Flesh of Song    and  Roses in the Sand, Your Hand.