If You Knew
this would be the final person
you’d ever kiss; this the last toast-
scented neck you’d lean towards
under an arched earlobe—
then perhaps you’d rest a minute,
more inhaling anarchist curls
casting curtains around your heads.
Even if this were just a penultimate touch:
neckline, lips, scent of apples—
what more could you ask, except
for time to slow—
then stop—as if in a children’s game
of statues, or in the fable, where
couples stumble into an underwater cave
opening outward towards a new country—
similar to the summer you turned twenty
and interlocked fingers with a stranger—
his limbs winged with a bronzed shine.
How this came together escapes
you now. What remains
are the tracks of his hands—
the most intimate touch,
until now—intuited as
in the way a cloud color transforms
in the indigo bowl of sky,
all of itself and another.
The way the sacred world
above the collarbone captures us
pinioned, tucked in, and never
in want of anything more.
*
Susan Rich is the author of six collections of poetry and co-editor of two prose anthologies. Her most recent books include Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry). She co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press) and Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders (Poetry Foundation). Susan’s previous poetry books include Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue–Poems of the World–winner of the PEN USA Award. Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds is forthcoming from Raven Chronicles Press.
