Before

Sometimes,
beginning to burn,

a log in the fire will sing,
remembering the birds.

A brown bowl,
holding three tangerines,

holds too, the memory of
the hands that shaped it

and holds the cool,
still silence
of the earth.

Each tangerine
repeats the image
of the sun.

The shadow
that the rocking chair
releases

dances on the wall
like a tree,
answering the wind.

In the dark
we slip, with the breath,
out of our sleeping bodies

into all we knew before.