Silentia Lunae:

Silentia Lunae: ¦ Pamela Stewart When the two shall be one, the outer as the inner, and the male with the female, neither male nor female. -James, The Apocryphal New Testament. Beyond the orchard and its blue hushed Hillside is the river I get to By repeating your name three times and taking The sunless passage behind my eyes Down to patient water. The trees twist Behind me, saddened it seems, by their roots And stillness. They wish for the trilled Piping of birds, a lullaby of leaf Brushing leaf above rocks, the wind .... But on days like today, when I lose That name, the blue beads I was, weaving into my hair vanish As the blank doorway Spills you home again, hungry. I know how ghosts have sealed Your eyes; it's true they are Transparent and you still see Beyond their silken breath. But once Touched by it, the boundary softens And the line you thought you could not cross Becomes witness to your trust. To ours: There's a man in me just shifting Out of boyhood. He talks slyly To other boys, draping slender fingers Seriously on their wrists. For months, He simply vanishes into someone else's air, Always returning nameless with the night . . . The Missouri Review · 37 Dear twin, though we're Always out of step, when you're around I'm grateful that our eyes Can see beyond their ridge of bone Into the vortex of the grave and up Where trees lift their tongue and veins Into the swept air. And we, earthbound still, Keep searching upturned, unsure—both Using each other's eyes and our own. Prone across the footbridge, you trail Your hand through sluggish water And name each leaf Floating past you toward the river. Pegasus, Sabha, Eclipse: Eyes closed, you ride them all the way To the sea and back to this solitary Stream your father named as yours. One Of us is always above water staring down, The other, weighted into its bed, Looks up. How we change and why We cannot know, only that it happens, that We share a binary mirror: It's my turn now to see you Luminous through this watery lens, Your dark circle of hair, Eyes like washed stones. I have no name For you, male moon of myself, but I know What you see now is your convex other half Captive beyond reach. I lie here With leaves passing above my open eyes, a few Black twigs that score the water Distorting you and you watch your other Bloom like a paper flower as the stream 38 ¦ The Missouri Review Pamela Stewart Drags off my clothes one by one: torn Petals that you touch As they go by, and reaching farther, You almost touch me with desire. The stream pulls itself to Chapel Falls, down The moss-lined granite walls, over black Swollen logs, lichen-paled and wedged To softness in constant water. By now, The rutilant leaves must be quilting all The fields' perimeters, the needled forest And flagstone walks. I'd walk there with you Burying the garden's dead—a ceremony Of purpose—before snow stiffens the ground And hides it from us. I'd take the path Along the Falls to watch smaller leaves Tumble and spin with froth Down to darkening pools. There, Like cat-yellow eyes, they spiral almost To stillness, staring at the thinned-out sky. I reach to catch the brightest, speckled Eye and bring it to my mouth—where are you? I paste it to my cheek and walk uphill Toward gravel, asphalt, and the power lines Humming light from town to town. I know How the certain dead pull me down, leveled, And bring me back to you With words and a single shining leaf and mouth. Pamela Stewart THE MISSOURI REVIEW · 39 The eye watches a song thread itself above leaves, Through air. The eye is starved for this And calls me liar when I try to dismantle Seam to selvedge. Now, its ravelled edge Brushes up my arm, thread Raising hair for the sharp excursion Toward bone. You test its edge and I Test yours pressing thigh to rib...