Over the big bed in the small room
The flat shadow
Turned, thinning our walls
Insistently,
Turning and turning us closer and closer to salt wind
In from the sea.

I could sing a song about a long gone lover,
Cape Cod dusk, Cape Cod shadow;
I sang a song then about the Cape Cod shadow,
Over door and wall, over
Shoulder and shoulder.

Did I have a face and did it lie
In shadow
Turning and turning your glances away?

Once there was a song about the Cape Cod shadow;
I sang the song.
The flat shadow turned over our walls and brought the sea in.
The song kept turning.

Composed in 1978, first published in Spells: New and Selected Poems by Annie Finch (Wesleyan U. Press, 2012).