Sweep me Through Your Many-Chambered Heart

Sweep me through your many-chambered heart

if you like, or leave me here, flushed

amid the sap-ooze and blossom: one more dish

in the banquet called April, or think me hard-

won all your days full of women.  Weeks

later, till I felt your arms around

me like a shackle, heard all the sundown

wizardries the fired body speaks,

Tell me why, if it was no more than this,

the unmuddled tumble, the renegade kiss,

today, rapt in a still life and unaware,

my paintbrush dropped like an amber hawk;

thinking I'd heard your footfall on the stair,

I listened, heartwise, for the knock.

Diane Ackerman