Eyes in Aspens

The path ascends itself.
In the grown dusk, the light is not yet bound
……….. to make an original vault; it does not emerge
……….. from corners by accident.
You are calm. Lightning somehow lasted. We were calm,
it foreshortened viewers at the lake. The patterns
hold others in.
The sun will return with extra data, dear moment, soon.

Come into the split moonbeam
which can match your mind
to the meanings they wanted. Come

to the compounds that will ignite the figure 8 over the golden
……….. rod, the gravel ghost.

The rocks left their bunting; three spiders drop
down: Clotho, Atropos, the third mythically forgotten.

We have replaced the garden with dew
rooms;
the river lily has been folded without objection.
You felt safe because horizon lightning made H or Z or N.

Follow us into the struck minerals,
a swallow. In a meadow
different temperatures are asked to remain what we are
wearing;
when you finally saw the lace-maker's dress, it was
precise and limitless.

* Brenda Hillman was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1951. After receiving her B.A. at Pomona College, she attended the University of Iowa, where she received her M.F.A. in 1976. She serves on the faculty of Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, where she teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs; she is also a member of the permanent faculties of Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and of Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her seven collections of poetry -- White Dress (1985), Fortress (1989), Death Tractates (1992), Bright Existence (1993), Loose Sugar (1997) and Cascadia (2001), Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005)-- are from Wesleyan University Press; she has also written three chapbooks, Coffee, 3 A.M. (Penumbra Press, 1982 ), Autumn Sojourn (Em Press, 1995), and The Firecage (a+bend press, 2000). Hillman has edited an edition of Emily Dickinson’s poetry for Shambhala Publications, and, with Patricia Dienstfrey, has co-edited The Grand Permisson: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood (2003). Among the awards Hillman has received are Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area; she is married and has a daughter.