Lucero Peak Cave (The Woman Who Rode Away by D.H. Lawrence)

First, a fence, then a gate.
Alone in the morning’s bright imprecision,

you know when you find the cave of the woman.
Last night, Lawrence had murmured long clauses

that lined up in your head
when you should have been sleeping.

The intimate alphabet, invaluable
hours, infinite regress of endings kept

blurring your vision. Even after the clock
molded minutes thick into hours, you twisted

and meandered through fragments.
The pages coated with dew. Now, flint light.

Small splinters of wind. The cave is wet
in odd places: ledges, silver cavities of rock.

Many long drips of water — not together, not fast —
leave a white line in nooks.

You are alert to the upright pine against glittering aspen.
Still alert to the sentence.

Someone would die here without anyone saying
a word. The sky lays down blue, with gray in its center,

and fingered with madness. Overhead,
the same sun, no longer tender.

You have never before climbed into a paragraph,
or a conclusion. Leaving the site, you read

summer’s flat light on the road.
The sun is unpunctuated, but reveals its opinions.