Close of Day

The hem of the cloud cover

does not quite reach her ankles:

her toenails are polished with silver,

but tarnish remains in the seams of her feet.

Slow and ancient

marsupials are there

in the pools of light.

You can't see them but you can feel

the hesitation of their wrinkled paws,

the tremor of their slow hopeless grope.

They arch their backs

and their blind snouts

nose in the skirts of cloud.

Coming to the edge today,

I looked and saw dolphins

playing in the deep, drawing

clusters of stars behind their tails:

spurts of darkness

rose above their heads.

I set one slender spike

and raised the sledge.

Catlike hisses came from

the unseen watcher

as if from some steam engine

afraid to die;

but oh, the sting of the haft

as the hammer struck home!

It's ringing still

in the great bones of my enormous arms,

and their shivering light filled

the hang of the emptiness

where the dolphins played.

But nothing

holds back the evening for long

and the creatures that nose for night

are older than me,

older than my kind;

and the even the light that still runs out

through flaws in the shell

is forced by the irregular beat

of this dear deep beast, my heart.