Scene — by Maxine Chernoff

What the body might guess, What the hand requests, What language assumes Becomes amulet, Which is to say I am carrying your face In a locket in a box To a virtual location Guarded by kestrels, Suggesting the scene’s Geography of love and dirt, Trees ripe with darkness And bones’ white luster. In the moonlit blue house, Where snow won’t fall Unless called upon, Grace enters as requested, Lands next to you, grasped, As if love were a reflex Simple as weather.