Epiphyte 2: Moss

Jane Eaton Hamilton
From:   Canadian Women’s Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2.
When you wanted to know
what I was preoccupied with
in the dusk, I wasn’t thinking
I was facing the mirror
lying against your right side
while beyond the window
the mountains rose like blue women

Seagulls tore the sky leaving indigo squawks
I was looking at the shape of your
cheekbone high on your face, and at your
thin arm. There was the smell of spring

We’d seen a dozen city
hummingbirds in our garden
the hover of their ruby throats. You
wrapped in our red towels. It was
Mother’s Day;

we had risen
and fallen like landscapes on our bed

I watched your breast which was fuller than
the night on my porch when I first undid
your buttons. The sheet beneath you was green
It was almost our anniversary
I was naked. You wore
blue jeans still clasped. Your
nipple pointed down like a scolding
thumb, and I remembered how that first time
after you came, you prayed that
I would never leave you
and then I never left