I Remember

She had beautiful hands, I remember Strong and brown and crude under the choking lamplight that wintry autumn of the potato blight I saw them cringe and turn over and over She thought I’d fallen asleep, but no I watched her silently in the dark, well past midnight. Her hair was rich and long, I remember Coarse and uncombed and tangled on sweaty afternoons One sweltering midsummer before the monsoons we crouched in the fields and together worried Masses of hair spidered across her wet cheeks Sweat or something else, running down those weathered prunes. She had eyes like the sea, I remember Stormy and clouded and murmuring of a shipwrecked sorrow That spring day the wind swept away the morrow she stood with her back to me and hung her head I saw her weak frame jolting and stiffening and my infant heart was splintered by an invisible arrow. Her voice was a melody through the reeds, I remember For fifty years her lips could give only sighs Unbroken silence shivering beneath frozen skies Her throat rippled when she looked at my blossoming face Quivered and quivered in a song of muted melancholy Then one day away she flew, like a flower, without goodbyes.