Time Darkens It

Lois Beebe Hayna

He says swallows circled over them.
She remembers no sound of wings. Only
of water harsh with autumn. Sometimes now
birds–cries shrill through dream–converse
and she wakes awed by a strange
sense of flight, just as he says he must
have imagined the swallows.
He speaks of an apple tree
bee-loud with blossom. She insists the tree
stood bare, the harvest long past. Yet, in odd
moments she catches the scent of flowering.
He shivers in recollected wind.
His memory jewels the sky with a crescent moon
and Orion. No, she says, wind and black clouds
scudded with storm. Now, looking up at a half-gone moon
she remembers a faint light
silvering his face. He ponders a moment,
admits to the dark.