Hieroglyphics

Hieroglyphics

Dawn covers the fishpond with its hand.
Past fine wires of a screened door,
an unknown country lies.
I watch you bathing in this frontier,
the haze and low rumbling clouds.
In the morning glare
the face of the pool is sulfur.
You stride, humming, lips enclosing
lyrics unfamiliar, as if
we had always lived apart. Your palsied
cat curls on the sill, white
with black symbols. So I talk
to the rhubarb's fleshy stalks.
Pyramids of white flowers pulse.

Thunder arrives, speaking
in a tongue more angry than divorce.
What do you answer, running
from the water? As you pass I think

to utter something profound
but cannot speak
the nameless language
carved into the sky.