At home, in Hampstead, dawn’s light pulls
in cold drafts, rattling door jams,
thick iron locks; the chill is contagious
as she steps out in her red-hooded cloak,
through cabbage and celery stalks,
in search of the carrier pigeon he sent last night
from his makeshift post in the tiny parlor.
Tomorrow, he’ll sail to Rome
clutching her gift of a marble oval
shaped to fit his palm, and clasped
so many times to cool her own hands
stinging from sewing; the stone
now meant to soothe his fevered skin
and remind him of her
while she scans the morning sky—
a frosted wind bowing the eel grass,
two strands now tangling into one.
Judith Harris is the author of Night Garden, The Bad Secret, Atonement (LSU Press), and the critical book, Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self through Writing (SUNY Press). Her poetry has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Slate, The New York Times blog, Ploughshares, The Hudson Review and “American Life in Poetry.”