Scene

Maxine Chernoff

The cinema is a specific language.
— Christian Metz

What the body might guess,

what the hand requests,

what language assumes

becomes amulet,

which is to say

I am carrying your face

in a locket in a box

to a virtual location

guarded by kestrels,

suggesting the scene’s

geography of love and dirt,

trees ripe with darkness

and bones’ white luster.

In the moonlit blue house,

where snow won’t fall

unless called upon,

grace enters as requested,

lands next to you, grasped,

as if love were a reflex

simple as weather.

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