Rebecca Foust

               —In the Syntax of Heraldry

Azure, a bend Or, sunset against sky.
Party per pale argent and vert, a tree
counterchanged by twilight. Cyan,
the sea-flooded dune, tincture of silver,
the sand your hair combed by ebb tide.
A beach rose gules for your cheeks, your eyes  
mudflat puddles brimming with moon.

The last tide is poised to turn again soon,
and I resign hope to its neap. Then
remember you, born in a scarlet welter
on a wave's green-curled edge of pain.
Your glad, loud cry, your father's shout,
the great gout of joy when I recognize
your face new morning's high tide, its blaze.

                —after Stanley Kunitz


When the world is only my window
and the white rhomboids of moon
thrown on the bare floor, when
I've unhooked from time, just this: you
looking inward still will burn somehow
somewhere with the same

when why not here why not now
the way you burned then, or this:
some blooming child will,
as you taught her, bring to her lips

a blade of grass to blow my name
into the wild broad bleed of a vowel.