Jane Miller
Image of a Saint

Many favor sunflowers seeding

I choose two lovers late September sharing sorbet

one can always choose to imagine

their fingers through each other's curls

without an image

of their heads bleeding & shouts all around

unnatural lighting & sour air

no small wonder there are deep voices

the wonderful red tiles of the South

an opera in the courtyard

& someone will be responsible for this

muggy lavender field

of vegetal & hay light climaxed in storm

& the stone towers too those

years vanished in an afternoon
the bronze figurines on the door to nowhere
someone remembers them
conjures rows of citizens before the campfire
pig blazing
 
All these days I've thought of myself
as a poet there's that halo 
around intimate matters
in language where impulse rules
intuition too has a habit of romancing
before it's shaded & twilit
as the slow bellow of afternoon breathes
in the shadow of the Duomo
we drive our daydream around
switching up narrow streets
a light rain breaks in on the fortification
heat mingles with evening
the world is noble & familiar
 
Language is barren before it is toned
by diction & syntax diction especially
& then meaning
musings amusements & nuance
create by the momentum of play & thought
feelings & settings
I feel for you
at home or away whenever
a century or a day goes by
as a creature of love speechless
with no other place to go
at the time we admit it
we ourselves are admitted
into the soft landscape
I study every day & fall behind a cloud
 
The cattleguard of the invisible ranch opens
a fringe of piñon & juniper stirs among the canyon rim
alabaster cows float in tall grass
cornstalks & sunflowers look like two-pump gas stations
a torn billboard in the middle of nowhere drops from sight
you halt before vertical walls of red rock
the tops of cottonwoods trade birds
 
Everywhere we've ever been
children & chickens & bells
the dew of the valley rises into stone streets
drawn uphill to the central square for the day
the squash blossoms of summer have their long nap
disrupted by a motorbike coughing & clanging
an age of brilliant spring greens burns into weeds
you walk in sandals unimpeded 
 
Found In Volume 26, No. 03
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Jane Miller
About the Author

Jane Miller’s books include Wherever You Lay Your Head and Memory at These Speeds: New and Selected Poems, both from Copper Canyon Press.