The Dusk

The tap on the door breaks our silence
into a handful of glass beads
scattering over unspoken memories.
Late afternoon tiptoes into the room
lingering out of habit at the slanted picture
and setting in the tremor of the second hand.

Your cigarette vanishes in a couple of inhales
leaving the wounded butt in the ashtray
and bluish rags over the shining coffee table
like smoke from the grumbling engine of a plane,
in a flash of thought united you
with the brilliantly lit ocean below.

You open the window:
a startled blaze of the carmine
flushes from your shoulder,
finding brief refuge on the wall
clinging to it; exhausted
it slips down to the floor.
Gradually the dusk evaporates
the red into the ancient purple

surrounding the yellow dandelion"s
diadem that I wove to guide you from
the daily worries and primeval fears.
You don"t like the plants in the house:
absorbed by the dark, 
the garland withers on the porch
like forsaken halo of our holiness.