Isis, by Katy Waldman

In Montague we ate fruit first. Downriver, pits
we gave to the water eddied away and sank fast.
The mill hosts parties, weddings, a bride
is here, trailing tulle in the dust, we move cherries
without looking from the bag to our mouths.

Winter had already come.
I was reading Robert Lowell,
whose ill-spirit sobbed in each blood cell.
Nothing so fiercely felt, on my part.

The crease below the palm
is red from your wax sheet:
the shape of a dragon, turned
down to me—

What he heard in the old age
What he said to the long flat stones

***

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