Rachel Hadas is Board of Governors professor at the Newark campus of Rutgers University. Her new book of the poems, The Golden Road, will be published this fall (2012) by Northwestern University Press.  Her web site is can be found here.  

Silk Quilt

It speaks to me of you,
this brown-rimmed fling of red,
a padded silken quilt,
a cover for a bed.

Night, when I miss you most,
is when you may return.
I wake into the morning
and rinse my eyes of dream.

So little one remembers.
Each day has its own tasks;
hours, weeks, months fill quickly.
But sometimes something asks

me to cast my mind back:
our years as one long night-
to-morning when we told our dreams
and blinked at the dawn light,

then pulled the covers over
our heads and shut out day
for one more hour.  What that was like
this silken quilt could say.

Rock in Morning Light

It was how light fell against the rock.
It was how light fell against.
It was how light fell.
It was how light.
It was how.
It was a facet broken off,

glaucous, dull, unless one licked the rock
or put it back on the beach
so that salt water covered it
and woke its colors up:
the rock renewed, grinding against its fellows,
carried out to sea a little distance

and back by the tide, unchanged
at least to the bare foot and naked eye;
to be picked up and pocketed
and carried to this castle's entryway.
Sea and garden beckon through French windows.
The rock sits on a table.  Morning light.