To Her Body, Against Time

Long over, what's on the tree
shivers. Sky hides behind
white-faced, giving flesh to branch,
a red leaf

or yellow far enough away,
what Broch called ''the style
of old age," simplified
of images,

lean in the perfection of the bough,
naked & half-undone. Clouds break,
rain against a hidden sun,
the form plain

From Red Actions: Selected Poems 1960-1993. Copyright © 1995 by Robert Kelly. Used by permission of the author.