Big Sister, apple light, kiss
on the river, tonight
make each word a strange dish,
each long ache, for once, a gotten wish.
Let this small song brush the big dark back
while You stroll along the sky forever.
Yo, to think such bright shadow, this
black sash, that soft shine She wears
comes spun from a sun flung aloft
the other side of my world. What
cat-eyed glow? What well-keyed
mischief? What
slow hands, deft and delicious, undress
my grim predictions, juice up
my ragtime shoes? It happens
on the now, while the moon is unshy.
My soul – yo, otherwise a pale theory – leaps
into the visible, trying his slippery spin
on the glad lap of Earth. Uncles, mothers,
sly lovers, mad friends, the moon does not
come back just to knock our dim efforts,
nor does the river bend away. Wasn’t it
this time last year? Remember?
The chubby invitation come soon, soon
each early autumn. Look at the water
with the light jingling like a wind chime
in the shimmer. Turn around.
Our hearts shine late in the trees.

From Buffalo Head Solos by Tim Seibles. Used by permission of the poet and Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Copyright © 2004 by Tim Seibles.