The Incantation

It happened in my grandmother's loft.

I don't recall
why I stayed there that night,
though she was
like a cave to which I'd crawl,
her beige carpets,
her hotel-lobby portraits
(of couples dining on the promenade,
and watering-cans
overflowing with flowers),
and that small, warm loft,
a place apart from time and space,
as my teenage self understood those concepts.

I must admit: it wasn't really the first time
I'd picked up a book of poems and read it,
but in hindsight it feels like it was.

The poem I remember reading
was about a lone woman walking through a garden
as the sun filleted her, her arms outstretched
like a religious ascetic's, the light becoming her.

The light became me, and I floated
slightly above the bed,
trembling in the dooryard
of a strange old world.