Hurricane Lamp

The power went out on the coast and she found the hurricane lamp,
the glass chimney smoked with the damp
of a closet that has not been opened in a year,
and she lit it with a kitchen match and I could hear
the wick catch like a small held breath
and the room went gold and the depth
of shadow on her face was the oldest kind of light,
the light that people wanted by before the electric night.

Hurricane lamp, the golden circle on the wall,
her shadow twice as tall
as the woman casting it, and I am in the dark
outside the light, a man watching a spark
become a woman become the warmest thing in the room,
hurricane lamp against the gloom,
and I have never wanted anyone the way I want
the woman in the lamplight and the slow gold haunt.

She set it on the table and sat cross-legged on the floor,
the flame between us like a door
that was open but guarded by the heat,
and the shadows made her features move and the beat
of the flame made her pulse visible at her throat,
the most beautiful woman in the most remote
corner of the blackout, and the wanting was so old
it felt like something settlers told
each other on the prairie when the lantern was the only bride
between the man and the long dark outside.

The storm hit hard an hour in and the windows shook with rain,
and she moved the lamp between us and the pain
of wanting was replaced by something closer, something lit
from underneath — she smiled and the wick spit
and the shadows danced and the room was very small
and the hurricane outside meant nothing at all
compared to the hurricane inside my chest,
the lamplight and the woman and the rest
of my life rewritten by a flame in a glass,
the hurricane lamp, the wanting,
and the hour that would not pass.