THE NARROWING HOURS
By Ruth Daigon

Stunned by morning, she slips out of bed
Stands barefoot on the cold tile
Looks into the mirror
suddenly aware of her skull, jaw
and bones just below the surface.

She's a skeleton clothed in flesh and thought
waiting for wonder,
vivid with longing.

Last night, she watched sunset
until the lost colors of evening.
Then in the narrowing hours she imagined
stars with fins, stars with feet,
the bone white eye of the moon

and in a trance of blue-veined dreams,
she's lost in the Museum of Natural History
with feather, wing, shell
the black center of time
and the salt wash of the sea.

Away from the stone music of the street,
away from the empty eyes of ancestors
and the great noise of it all, she sits
hollow-boned with the midnight people
as the owl's outspread wings shadow the earth.

2

The scarred moon hangs overhead.
Moss spreads underfoot.
Vines multiply moment by moment
pulling her into the undergrowth
until shadows shrink at the first light
and small animals cry yes and
again yes.

Barefoot in the wash of sunrise,
she moves into morning hours,
blank as the names of the unborn
and opens her hands
as if to touch spring's lush palette,
the rinsed body of earth,
and every morning is childhood's mapless country,
raw and splendid.
walking
feeling the blood's ascension
and her own sweet pulp
clear veins and ripened skin.
She hears the summer glories
the birds shrill necessities
cadenzas ardent and unending.

All through midsummer's extravagance
and in August heat
things slow becoming still
as if earth stopped to take a breath.
At that moment she descends into hunger
before moving toward something certain
like the long swim toward the silence of absolute light.

Ruth Daigon was founder and editor of POETS ON: for twenty years until it ceased publication. Her poems have been widely published in E mags, print mags, anthologies and collections…She was Poet-Of-The-Month on the University of Chile's Pares Cum Paribus (an E chapbook in English and Spanish). Her chapbooks appear in WEBDELSOL, THE ALSOP REVIEW, FORPOETRY, POETRYMAGAZINE, THREE CANDLE REVIEW, KOTAS'S POETRY ANTHOLOGY both in hard cover and on the WEB. some of her earlier poetry collections are "Between One Future And the Next (Papier-Mâché Press) 1995, "About A Year" (Small Poetry Press, Select Poetry Series)1996. Daigon's poetry awards include "The Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, 1997 (University of Southern California Anthology), 1997) and the Greensboro Poetry Award (Greensboro Arts Council, 2000) Her poetry collections continue with "The Moon Inside" (Gravity/Newton's Baby), 1999. She is part of Pudding House Publications Poetry Chapbook Series "Ruth Daigon's Greatest Hits 1970-2000. "Payday At The Triangle" (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series) based on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City,1911 was published in 2001 and one of her many readings was performed in The Lower East Side tenement Museum in Manhattan, the area where the fire occurred. Her latest poetry book is "Handfuls of Time" (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series) 2002, Her poetry was published by the State department in their literary exchange with Thailand and their translation program has just issued the first book of Modern American poets in English and Thai in which she appears.ruthart@aol.com