Poem: For a Poem — Miriam Levine

For a Poem

Miriam Levine

You would have to go down

into cold earth like my father.

Gold light against shadow

black as onyx, cool as dew:

my favorite combinations.

You would have to leave me

and come back years later in a dream

just before morning,

supplicant's hands shivering

against thin glass.

I would have to wake with your smell

and texture, cadence and timbre,

moving from bed to desk—

a cold chapel. My words melting

over your body like baptismal water won't

raise you through this blue chill. I could

tell you how precious, how absent.

PoemsMiriam LevineAugust 10, 2019