Late

Gibbons Ruark Click to read more...

The recipient of three NEA Fellowships in poetry, Gibbons Ruark is retired after many years of teaching at the University of Delaware.  His books include Rescue the Perishing, Reeds, Passing through Customs: New and Selected Poems and most recently Staying Blue (Lost Hills, 2008).  He currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife.

[audio:http://shenandoahliterary.org/612/files/2011/08/Ruark-Late.mp3|titles=Ruark Late]

Late night, late love, and at the window, rain,
And then the aftermath of love and rain,
The wakefulness beside a kitchen window,
The whole house quiet as the soul of darkness

Except for the sounds of two clocks ticking,
Or one blind clock on the cloud-lit wall
And another going tock tock in the downspout.
The rain could spill from the leaves for an hour.

I stand in darkness at the bedroom door
And catch your feathered breathing, slow and pure,
Easy as a heartbeat or the summer rain,
Then wander back for a glass of water

And only the slow tock tock of the rain
To tell me I am breathing in my time again.

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