twinned pearls loose

in nacreous sheets,

polar stratospheric

clouds at civil twilight

fertilised by lightning.

Something her brother told her

about how it would end:

to play the circle of fifths

until the keynote is lost

in a spindle of chords. Back there

the flicker of a tiny wing,

eyelashes shuttered as she

relaxes down the slide,

visible like sunshine or

a spotlight of cyan brume

beaming through glamour

of foliage. Tomorrow the funeral,

then the day after that

another funeral. A sinewy form

pummels past in the dark:

fox’s alarm bark. Double moon

in the golden orb of the eye

dissolving in quicksilver,

having foreseen everything

except the suffering: murmurs

of concern heard in the walls.

How did names begin? Traced

with a finger on moist glass,

effaced, then confabulated

in a caravan of false memories,

the points of Ophiucus fading:

white serpent stringing star to star,

ghost ferns hooded in shrouds

of snow descending the glen.

Cold ossuary meats before

their first nuptial kiss through

the furnish of a veil. Along

the perfumed lines of parquet

floor, accession of stellar sheen

over chevron crests. Easier

to say that she doesn’t love

than this covenant to conceal

a lost title. This projection

in camera obscura reversed.

Her procession to origin.