Jane Cooper

The last full moon of February stalks the fields; barbed wire casts a shadow. Rising slowly, a beam moved toward the west stealthily changing position until now, in the small hours, across the snow it advances on my pillow to wake me, not rudely like the sun but with the cocked gun of silence. I am alone in a vast room where a vain woman once slept. The moon, in pale buckskins, crouches on guard beside her bed. Slowly the light wanes, the snow will melt and all the fences thrum in the spring breeze but not until that sleeper, trapped in my body, turns and turns.

Once you said joking slyly,If I’m killed I’ll come to haunt your solemn bed, I’ll stand and glower at the head And see if my place is empty still, or filled.