Starr Goode BODIES OF TIME I. Under our star, the only visible and twinkling star, we lie in the dark room. Moonlight falls on her cheek, a child asleep. A scene of earthly bliss, but her breath comes heavy from tears. "You leave," she said. "Then I miss you." I make a wish upon the star: please make me worthy of this child's affection. (Our star might truly be the planet Venus.) To guide her sleep she took my hand in hers which from the land of dream is squeezing mine from time to time. I hear the lullabies that fill the air of nighttime’s room. Out over the trees, the night expands a peaceful rule. Within its equanimity, this time can take away my emptiness, the waste of time I often judge my life to be and fill it with this blessed reality, before I have to leave or think of all the days to live until I can return. AFTER THE RED ROSE BORDERED HEM It was a rainy May when I came to your grave, after some twenty years of wanting to. I came in freezing wind with crows squawking in nearby trees. It was hard to find you in the wet lonely churchyard. Through driving rain and wind, I softly spoke your poems back to you, thanked you deeply for your life and the work then realized it might be warm beneath the earth, warmed by flames at the core. ACACIA There was sweet freedom after school, when I walked beyond my house the path to the acacia grove, my own enchanted world. And now, midway to spring, its yellow blooms again. I bury my tired face in the fresh blossoms; I'm not young, the big white clouds are moving on. Where would I be with no past sorrows, standing beneath a spray of cut acacia, like my moon girl carved on a crystal vase forever staring at the glass moon and stars, the light that's always there? Along the road, the trees release the smell of spring. It gives such joy to mortal bodies. I can remember climbing high, so high upon the yellow bough, I did not know how to get down, how to return down to the earth. Acacia roots are deep enough in the dark earth to stand and live.