Her turtle throws Platonic stars on walls

Geometry

• Above the lake, the little birds flit
• in shallow sine waves, skimming low
• to catch the mayfly hatch, and leaving cold,
• concentric rings where beaks and wingtips kiss
• the glass. The morning light is pale and clear,
• a whiteboard where the shapes of all the world
• are waiting to be drawn. I stand and watch
• the birds, their catenaries steep and wild.
• What force is this that stokes their frantic hearts,
• that holds me shorebound in the morning chill?
• I’m sure I’ll never know. Yet still I feel
• the pull of all that life, and even more
• I cannot help but feel your gravid heart
• asleep behind me in the cabin. It tugs
• me back from apogee, and I begin
• to fall, a grateful arc across the beach,
• a curving path that takes me back to you.

The Dark Between the Stars

• From the dresser where it sits, green and plush,
• Her turtle throws Platonic stars on walls
• And ceiling both. They hang there in the hush,
• A sky where nothing moves and no star falls,
• And light my daughter’s room in firefly glow.
• Awake and curled beneath the sheets, she grips
• Imaginary oars and starts to row.
• Her ocean’s midnight black and vast. It slips
• Beneath her bed, a purling beast that sweeps
• Her farther out to sea, to distant isles
• Where nights are long and hidden danger sleeps.
• Back home, I unfold maps and count the miles.
• I watch the constellations. So bright and far
• Away, she plies the dark between the stars.

The End of Time

• So now, forever now, the sun hangs
• like a cold and pendent fire upon a bough,
• and the whole serrated sea is still, sculpted
• glass and foam beneath a watercolor sky.

• And even here, far inland, in a place
• where grass is trimmed each week, where robins cry
• the dawn and sidewalks girdle all we know
• and love, even here the gears of time

• have shivered to a stop. The air is fixed,
• the silence certain. Peace and horror drop
• heavy as a velvet curtain, and all
• the bright, unnumbered world begins to dim.

• The final photons fall like flakes of snow,
• like incandescent bits of time that cling
• to faces, hands, and lips. And as the world
• goes dark, a stage that fades to black, we glow.

Rob Griffith’s latest book, The Moon from Every Window (David Robert Books, 2011), was nominated for the 2013 Poets’ Prize; and his previous book, A Matinee in Plato’s Cave, was the winner of the 2009 Best Book of Indiana Award. His work has appeared in PN Review, Poetry, The North American Review, Poems & Plays, The Oxford American, and many others. He is the editor of the journal Measure and teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Evansville, Indiana.