Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


WHAT WE SAID THE LIGHT SAID by JAMES GALVIN

Poem Explanation Poet Analysis

First Line: MYSTERY MOVES IN GOD-LIKE WAYS
Subject(s): GOD; MYSTERY; SAXOPHONES; WOMEN;

@3Mystery moves in God-like ways@1
Is one of many possibilities
And may be why I'm here without you now.

High clouds bruise and white peaks incarnadine.
@3Slender tree of muliebrity@1 would be another explanation.

Prairie grass, seductive, luxuriates in amber.
Some other
Scraps of clouds the rain left behind
Hunker down for the night in valleys.

The fencepost's shadow leaps out across the plain
Like the bejeezus
Out of someone.

@3The mirage becomes an oasis@1
Is something it might have said.
The first stars creep forward
Like wild children coaxed from the woods.

Love, then, was just a sweeter loneliness
Than this,

Though snowbroken aspen across the meadow
Still catch the latest light like a grove
Of saxophones,
Like you said,

@3Temporary, like eternity,@1
Though once,
And once again,
Daylight held us on the tip of its tongue
And forgot what it was saying.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org



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