___________
Remains
The baker's body was found, spiced
with cloves and wrapped
in the lost lyrics of Sappho.
For years, he lay in the sand, her song
against his cheek: thin fire
runs like a thief through my body.
A single feather drifts
out of the sky, but the rook flies on.
Not broken, not beyond repair,
but gone--the whole
that leaves behind a part, a city
humbled to its artifacts:
plate, doll, ring.
A tube of lipstick,
fallen from a boat,
rusts at the bottom of a lake--
even daylight crumbles
into sleep: its fragments bob and nod
to one another as they pass.
And figments of the night
linger during breakfast,
where the scent of China tea still clings
inside an empty pot.
*****
Mary Cornish
_____________
