Trying the door,
I bend to enter the playhouse,
too large for the room, the chair,
the rising moon squared in the pane
of the tiny window. The table’s set.
My face in the teaplate swims,
like a face set loose from its moorings.
Tonight a crumb will be my portion,
a drop of tea my bitter draught.
Where is she now, the child
who made this house her own dominion?
How easily she has closed the door
on the props of ritual afternoons,
the dolls’ lessons and scoldings,
to enter an enchantment of man and beast,
to be the mistress of an immensity
of chilly halls and chambers,
of winding stairs and leaded windows,
each gilded plate, each goblet, held
in her unsure hand, heavy with weight.
She has entered a grave
unchanging kingdom where the resdess cries
and footfalls of imagined companions
will not be heard except as whispers
echoing lightly through vast marble rooms,
like drafts from an open window.
Shall I forget this night, this dream?
Forget the wink and tear of the doll
crying at a shard of moonlight in her eye?
Forget the drop of tea that lies
like a stain at the bottom of the teacup?
I wake to the grieving moon-mouth
falling forever over the dark horizon,
wake to the whippoorwill calling her name,
mine, outside the cold casement.
But I have forgotten all in the time
it takes to blink an eye shut, then open.
Again the whippoorwill calls.
And again it does.
But the child is gone.
The house stands empty.
