"Self-Portrait as The Crane Wife," Jocelyn Saunders
For numberless turns of the moon, I had sat
in the softness of bluegrass, plucking myself
of feathers as my capillaries had burst
like applause along mottled expanses
of gooseflesh, my loom spinning out
your silk fortune until you came
upon my prayer on this night
of power. For twelve unfruiting
years, I had performed this courtship dance unknown
to you, even as it had been killing me. I want to say
look around at what my secret sacrifice has brought
us, but already your face is shuttered, your body
taut like a bowstring and, there is irony in that—how your once
perfect earth seems to be growing smaller and larger
all at once.
Acts I thought benevolent, you think betrayal. I feel it
now—the weariness of competing with a world that will not end.
The maiming arrow tipped
with hemlock you knock back in half
loving hope, half blind horror tears a hole
in time, in the lashing rain that stretches
like a newborn galaxy between us yet we both
know that hope is the thing with feathers. As I plunge
out of this life as your wife into the warm canvas of pink
dawn, my first ratting bugle calls in more than a decade come
out like a string of pearls as I look back and see
myself in the gold shards of your eyes.
Who is remembering whom?