Day 1
Earthrise on a dead planet.
Pregnant opal earth of bluegreensilver ice,
Always unlucky as opal, like tearfilled eyes,
Earthrise shoving aside the black void.
Day 2
My man wears the silver suit of deep space,
While I, space concubine, scientific adviser,
While I sit counting.
While I sit computing, collating, the gamma rays,
The days of the moon, the days since his starship departure.
Day 3
And as I count, I count the dead faces of my lovers,
Sucked into the black hole of memory,
Passing the window like holograms
Like mermen of horrible whiteness, of waterlogged decay, of floating bloated putrescence.
The waterlogged mermen, plus the tearful earth,
Equals the wrong days of the moon.
Day 4
During the geometry of freefall love in zero gravity,
Each amorous thrust shifts us farther apart into separate orbits.
He once had a satellite wife, who died,
And I think even she retains more of him than I.
1961
Mary Argent copyright