In a house of empty rooms, I thought I heard a door close down the long hall.
I couldn’t know whether someone had entered, whether someone had left.
No further step, simply the closing of a door-an absence of other defined stir, more like the hum of water in a hidden spring, like a starved echo from an exacting hill I could not measure.
I reached for the reassuring hand. It was not there. He had gone ahead.
Reference:
May Miller
At last I am acquitted
My body heavy with shame.
I dip myself in the dark river,
Wash again, and once more,
What us the mass that floats from me
Down the dark river?
I am not guilty!
I am not guilty!
I tell the white birds
Flying low over my head.
(But they’re busy with each other.)
lovers, accept me, you lover!
I call to the pairs
Swept by in a canoe’s rhythm.
(No answer, no matter,
I’ll never see them again.)
I return to the waters
Trampling the hollow sedges
That do not bother to answer
Even persistent winds.
Only the river responds
Promising no unholy footprint…