Rummy Park, 53
(If Anything Changes)

by Rebecca Lu Kiernan

You wouldn’t like martinis, pineapple bread, Pushkin.
You would not have a sharkskin shirt,
Raspberry pharaoh hound,
Chinese vase of heliotrope by the bed.
You would not see
My hands in the dark,
The face on Mars.

You might write me from a monastery
Of crooked douglas firs and candlelit silence.
You would neither return home,
Nor, invite me to your stone country.

The moon is coming and I am not ready.
The light is blurring your confident edges.
At sunset you would be a potential angel.
If I move you might not see me
Apart from twists of trees and circles of sharks,
Alien faces on unalterable worlds.