Sundial
Once as a child and only once I walked
into the past time of their making, those godlike ones
 
so unappeasable so separate at one
in a tangle of sunlight on the riddled sheets.
 
She lay, open to my knowing. On her belly,
bare, his finger played. And the branch
 
of its shadow foundered to a darker shade
moss damp and pearled with honey.
 
I closed the door. The time was one o’clock
I noted on the garden sundial’s face
 
following its triangle of dark
down from the gnomon to the I engraved.
Copyright © 2004–2023 Memorious