Landscape, with Cave and Lovers

And once, in a book we read together, we paused:
not when the nurse reads to him or his ghost from a book
on permanent things in a room in a ruined villa, not

when his plane goes down in flames in the middle
of the desert—  Not even when, finally, he carries
the woman in his arms and leaves her on a smooth

rock ledge in a cave, whispering he will go for help
and return very soon, my darling— but there after she
has already died, in the middle of the cold and dark,

at the part where in his grief he is moved to enter
her once more— does he not?— and there is only this
place left in the world to which he’s been sentenced,

this fastness far from anything but rain
and the last words she spoke, drifting into
the perfect darkness like smoke or ink—

—Luisa A. Igloria
03 23 2011

In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.