Mother of Pearl Old Photographs

Or so I’d name you, lost scrap of the sky, glow of wrinkling water on the checkered kitchen

tile, swirl of wet grasping light inside each bubble clustered on the cold lip of a milk glass,

iridescent white but magnified and magnifying, bright as an ice skating rink in the after-hours

dark, present but transparent as the shadow of a swimmer cast across lake-bottom rocks,

shy as the glimmer of a new dime dropped in the patched grass in the park, quiet as an eyelid

as it shuts, nightwise, after love, as yours, strange heart, does while I whisper to myself

another name, a little gauze to wrap the pale trace you will leave inside the morning, like a fog