Thomas R. Smith
Day of Rest
Is this how it was for our ancestors,
setting their work aside? A silence smoothed
the aging faces, and the young body,
tasting honey, came near inside the old.
Then a farm couple’s bedroom could become
for an hour a heavenly boudoir,
an inner wealth, carried off by the ten
thousand ants of necessity, restored.
The day is late, love, but invoking
the Sabbath still has power. We find
again the curly sheepskin, the lashed
trellis, the sun curtained by grape leaves.
My hand reached through stopped time toward
the shimmer of your breasts, promise older
than the world, in this house whose walls are
flying away from us at the speed of light.
