Is When

Benjamin Marrow

After the honeygold agony of a sunset
finishes toppling the sky is when

we’ll sit together in folding chairs
under the awning, tasting the dusk is when

we’ll tuck away the valley’s warmth into our mouths
without even needing to speak of it

is when the spilled light will show us
half of everything in vivid, desert pink

is when we’ll sit together, orange-pink
amidst the bright quiet like our house cats
and hanging plants

centrifuging the stillness outwardly and away
over the tough field scrub to the lonely gray mallow

which skin-bare and silver-lipped among the dry rocks
drink up our mineral time and stun

the air cool to our griefs, decanting all our indifferences
into the great lavender sky of indifference—

This is when the living bees
will settle in the world

and a hummingbird will shut her eye to sleep
is when we’ll humbly accept

the soft, blue darkening around us
the last bits of light going sea green

sinking violet into brown is when
the mountain itself will glow like a mirror

off our skins like a childhood dream
illumined deep into our tender vacancies

is when we’ll fall away into the disappearing
phosphorescence of each other

new with night and iridescent alongside
the little bone moths, self-beaten to death

is when, untiming our ghosts and unwearing
our own silvers, we’ll acquiesce to this love

and detach with a click and finally twist
the deep, cold rivers of our lives together

closing and opening our mouths as shimmering fish
to the one tongue of night is when

the milk of stars will flood every empty arroyo
every corner of the full sky just for us.

—

Benjamin Marrow is a poet living in Las Cruces, New Mexico.