Afterward

American Poetry Review, The, May/Jun 1998 by Rodeman, Juliet

One can not have two souls

and stay at the window dark.

Orange windows at morning,

pink at dusk.

Summer, the scrubbed kitchen,

already the garden gate humming,

pining, sinning.

And that's when the white horse

returns. Only years later

when the white horse returns

do I remember the Summer story

now that the white horse comes

again, my house a can't help,

where sleep darks the banister.

The creaking of the house

asks me to listen, my scrub rag

hung on its peg, pail of water

pumped at the cistern back porch,

ill of spirit, twins of the floor

cleaned, the spirit shaken hold,

not expected, but whose presence

the can't help honors, the pieces

of the heart a havoc still.

Lain down on the floor together

after the pumping at the cistern

when the dusk's west dissolves,

where, when it was said, Oh, look

her soul crashes into the house

and the other hurries to wrap her arms

around the thing that is so long coming

between them. Kitchen, the long night speaks,

the wrought iron gate tweaking

at the edge, setting fire,

having the last word, dying down,

even the wind wicked out.