Settling Old Affairs

Settling Old Affairs

Although we come together

Nothing can come of us.  But we would not give

It up, for death is beaten…

God bless you.  Guilt is magical.

                                                                James Dickey

                                                                Adultery

though I was hit early
and often 

and with a man nearly twice

my age I made it

seem inevitable that I could
take it up at all
what he called
my mantle and hefting it

all the way
to the mountains and back
those flatirons 

rising high because they were

pushed up millennia ago
out of the boulders and tall as New
England cemetery stones my then house-
cat husband and I drove

                                                  out to

meet them and in that earth I dug

my own grave and I lay down in it

and stayed and stayed

and stayed until the day

I came back and gave away
what remained of us
for free or cheap
fingers that knew me

and I lived
in that house for years
while I made

my way through

and though I can’t say I knew my way
                                                and I can’t say

I would

even even today

I will say all that rocking
back forth back

forth back

forth back

into a new groan is a syllable
coming but not yet sound

a word not yet
Word

a sentence
not a sentence not yet
not yet but almost and almost, wait
for it and rejoice,

life.