Of Una Jeffers

Poems by Jessica Schneider

Tor House, Carmel, California, 1950

For you, there is a quiet
spinning through a crystal
coiling pitch. A nautilus
shapes the wind, lifting
isolation by means of a cloud.
Heaven reminds me of swimming
to the Nebula,
the end, still
warm from my taste of it.
I have returned
as swirls of space,
the face of you, seeing
tones of many
stars. Magnificence
in daily swims, your limbs lean
towards summer
waves of my hair. Brushing
upon me, you gather a hiss
of the Pacific. I have come to mind
your thoughts at work
in the fluid yawn
late in your eyes' colossus
of sleep. You spoke
my name, voiced
many places, invoked
the man I knew,
by my side. Naturally,
the effervescence of dream
formed me,
a million things—
the hills in the heart,
outside our home, the courtyard
erosion, the lives
of a young husband and wife.
It is here where you wrote your best
poems—shadows,
suns, bones
of many ends.