.
At times I almost believed it: madness
the only way to say yes,
to stumble into shapes of night
the gape open
like abandoned wells––
This would work like no other
disguise––yet I chose another
route, neither mad
nor well
enough to shout yes!
when morning scissor-blades opened
my sack of night
full of valentines to death––Night
whose curve of darkness I preferred to other
hours' slanting light that would open
all my closed lives––not the madly
flowered darkness that would make you say yes!
but—–I might as well
admit it—the well-
sealed kind of night
where I could nod yes
to another
sputter of benign madness
from the loaded gun of an open
wound whose red opening
was never stanched well
enough; if only I hadn’t feared the mad
shudder-burst & bloom demanded by you night
I would have become another
woman, spread open like a figtree in my father’s
northern garden, Yes
or––yes!
a house with its shutters open
to another
throng of lovers climbing my well-
flowered hair night after night,
all Amherst going mad,
its quartz contentment split open by the pulsing night––
Molly, as well become you as another—–
Yes, and my heart going like mad and saying yes
I will yes!
