Burnt orange & compensatory

She was standing naked at the window
next to a small Pembroke table
upon which sat my keys & my wallet & a candle
unlit

            because it was midday & the sun blasted intense

light down from a sky that was impossibly
high & blue

                        & all I could see was her silhouette

as if cut from a book on the Black Arts
if you need me to say it

            sharing a seaweed cigarette there is

sand in the bed & beach tar on the soles of our feet

                        music drifting in from the other room

Patti Smith or Mingus

                                    I couldn’t say for sure

there were damp shadows in my ear
& the Coleridge I read that morning I found it to be
instructive

                    like the punctuation marks I chose to ignore

in my copy of the Tao Te Ching

            which I forgot to mention was casually placed

on the table between my wallet & the candle “This is a
still life” she said & I thought yes, this is still
life

            or at the very least a 60/40 split