Navel to Knee

Today brings a blue hour,
but the jasmine has been dead for weeks.
This rare fistful of minutes says
give me a moment alone,
says what happens now is private.
The windowpane is touched
by what can’t fairly be called
light anymore, and what’s still
alive—flax lily, climbing fig,
the toothed leaves of hydrangea—
bears witness. I pull up my shirt
and look for signs that I’ve changed,
for skin that veils itself in color
now, not cloth. I’m bound
by the mechanics of my eyes,
drawn as they are to spectacles
of light or its departure.
Here is an unusual hour
in my one ordained life, a nest
of growth that will stop growing,
an intimate moment under shade
loved only because it ends.
The passing hour says turn away,
and deepens. The sky changes
and I watch.