In morning, the sink gathers and holds the moon-white
plate a daughter stacks there.  Berry juice congeals.

Earth in morning turns like someone who hears
her name called, turns and lets the sun into her antechamber

then boudoir, the back hallway shut and dark.  Shine
happens on the pond or its sandy skirt—ignites a piece of mica.

Napping raptors see it, one eye open: a glint, a movement,
a thirsty vole.  If you don’t occupy a hilltop and pause

in your wood splitting or in extracting a thorn from your foot—
if you don’t look—the sun will sluice, change its angle, demote

the mica to stone.  The plate shifts and the juice
congeals.  She left it there and walked barefoot on the gray

carpet.  I could run water.  I could watch the hummingbird feeder
beyond streaked glass.  It’s noon and nearly dark, we’re stuck

in the shadows, the day wanes and drains the counter/
threshold/pock-marked lawn of their blue like a corpse

with its veins tapped, pale and pale.  The morning’s promise
stalls where plain meets ridge, the way a closed mouth

is dark and contoured and only its owner knows the way
from tooth to tooth and down the supple throat.

cameron k. gearen