The No-Name Tapestries
When I think of the dead, it means
they’re thinking
of me, I delude myself happily, on occasion,
assuming the past
a thing to cherish like a face
surprised I bothered to come at all, given
the rain and the long drive.
But you were always let’s go anyway.
The commonest phrase: alive and well.
As if we jumped out of a hole
to stand here radiant.
In the no-name old tapestries, many
with halos, a glow or
a circle of jagged lines around each head
never bowed at the table, simply
looking straight on like a mirror gives us
back to ourselves.
If sometimes the women
in those lush hangings so plainly dressed,
their rims woven
deep and lit, turn sideways, the hills,
a blue distance involved —
Out there. The one vanished, or just now
walking away —