A Poem

Ruby Heart
(Beth Kephart)

In the white saucer of your car through the dark
we drive Tiburon to Berkeley —
the water wide to our either side,
the earth collapsible and folding.

Not the garden, not the wall of black and whites,
not your daughter in the halo chair now sleeping,
not the fortuneteller with the horns for ears,
the vectors for lashes: Not yet.
The blue house is not yet.
The street you’ll make from the highway
on this Monday is impressionable, not yet.

Still us only, driving. Still the car that elicits envy
for how it forces our abandon, gives us nothing
to hold onto but our own faith in our own right
to another day. Still the faulted land
and the bay so complete it would sink us
like the minerals we have, after all this living become.
You ruby red, the color of heart.
Me sapphire, sky beyond sky.