THE GRAPE ROOM

The room in which we have not lain wrapped like

grape leaves from some sumptuous Greek dish

will be musty, cluttered, and have a single point of light

that will disappear within the space of one long kiss.

Right now, the cat in here, not in that other room,

eyes me suspiciously, peering from slit eyes when I

exclaim over how he can sleep with his head upright.

He knows there is more to the world than meets closed eyes.

The room in which we have not lain might be a cold room,

but there will be quilts and steaming mugs.

Shadows of former and present lives will find us

though we shun them, and in the dim light of one

unscented candle I will reach for you and you will

circle my thin wrist with tremulous fingers wondering

if it would snap if you took me the way I wanted.

The room does not exist, of course, except

in some stepping out of time, of space, into a

parallel universe of alternate whispers and storms.

In the room here, across from the cat and high on a shelf

sits a clock.  My clocks all lose time.

Some say I carry an electric charge that somehow

affects the hands, halting them in their solemn promenade.

You talk often of distorted time.

I wonder if the room in which we have not lain

will ever hold us, or whether it should.   Tonight,

I write but you answer little, whereas before,

you answered, oh yes, little;  you are not a man of words

so much as other things.  But something is different.

I feel it in the still night air, hunching beneath a

bare-bulbed lamp, that lazy lump of fur now dreaming

in a tight silly ball, and with a book for company.

I wonder if you will send words that say

I cannot wrap you like grape leaves and there is no room,

that we must abandon such foolishness, that, as you .

often mourn, life is not fare.   And I will say,

but who wants life?   I want just the parts between its lines,

Its shoulder blades, its thin unsteady limbs.

My darling, we are old now;  most clocks do keep ticking.

     Where is the dusky room

              In which we do not lie --

                 do we dare unlock the door

                      and work its rusty loom?

Copyright 2008 Julianza Shavin