David Wojahn
February 2004

Excavation Photo


After making love she’d found it, asking me to touch the place
     as well:
her left breast, I remember that precisely, & just below the nipple
     I can also still recall,

half-dollar sized, a dusky pink that grew erect so often in
     my mouth and hands.
But the year, the details of the room, all blown apart in memory,
     Broken vessels, potshards

gleaming in the excavation photo’s sepia, sunlight & long shadows;
     & if only my hand remains
circling, pushing, probing, it’s a lump I’m sure of it & if
     I could tell you what would happen

next, which sound from her throat, which sound from mine, the days
     & weeks to follow
& the bitter eschatologies of touch, what profit would
     such knowledge give you?

Would you hear our bedside clock? Cars outside in the rain?—
     & where is she now? Could you tell me
that much? Sand & gravel sifted & the sough thing rises,
     stroked and circled with a tiny

horsehair brush. Bead, shard, incised bone, it does not flare
     in the toothless worker’s
whorled palm; & my hnad keeps moving even now, the fine
     transparent hairs

erect as they waken from gooseflesh-speckled aureole, my circles
     tight, concentric. Do you
feel it now? The push & probe & spiral & the sudden
     yes I can feel it too.

from The Falling Hour, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.