leaning over us in icy stars
through this night-shot
night-shot dark
is never easy.
Flowers fade here.
Voices pull me on through the cavern
from the new season. Her voice old, silent—
our hands, our breasts, our curves
curl through our hands and ravel—
On damp limestone, a violet curling—
my lover, when you riddle with me
the hard, the intricate dark.
Rack me with courage, spring,
come kill me, flowers;
if we are shadows, come;
make me our shadows
as I reach for flowers.
OVER DARK ARCHES
Naked and thin and wet, as if with rain,
bursting I come out of somewhere, bursting again.
And like a great building that breathes under sunlight
over dark arches, your body is there,
And my milk moves under your tongue—
where currents from earth linger under cool stone
rising to me and my mouth makes a circle
over your silence
You reach through your mouth to find me—
Bursting out of your body that held me for years,
as the rain wets the earth with its bodies—
And my thoughts are milk to feed you
till we turn and are empty,
till we turn and are full.
A CAROL FOR CAROLYN
It is easy to be a poet,
brim with transparent water.
—Carolyn Kizer, “In the First Stanza”
I dreamed of a poet who gave me a whale
that shadowed clear pools through the kelp-making shade.
When beached sea-foam dried on the rocks, it would sail
down currents that gathered to pool and cascade
with turbulent order.
She brims with transparent water,
as mother and poet and daughter.
The surface is broken and arching and full,
impelled by the passions of nation and woman.
The waves build and fall; the deep currents pull
toward rocky pools cupping the salt of the human.
The ocean she’s authored
brims, with transparent water,
for poet and mother and daughter.
CHAIN OF WOMEN
These are the seasons Persephone promised
as she turned on her heel;
the ones that darken, till green no longer
bandages what I feel—
Now touches of gold stipple the branches,
promising weeks of time
to fade through, finding the footprints
she left as she turned to climb.
GHAZAL FOR A POETESS
Many the nights that have passed,
But I remember
The river of pearls at Fez
And Seomar whom I loved.
—“Laurence” Hope, 1903
The corners of the frontispiece yellow from their darker edges.
Aching eyes lift in tremolo from their darker edges.
Moon lit your blood in the jasmine-blooming gardens;
bodies still glide in tableau from their darker edges.
Your “hungry soul” laps at the page with its “burning, burning”;
your moans send out an echo from their darker edges.
Silk covers your arms, your fingers, your lips, your voice.
Your black lines weave a trousseau from their darker edges.
Wind strikes at the palm trees where you walked;
fronds shake like tousled arrows from their darker edges.
Your nights spread quiet over “parched and dreary” sand.
Finches fill them till they glow from their darker edges.
MEETING MAMMOTH CAVE, EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT
In the night to my humanness
the unparticled has poured,
no beam will sink or angle,
no slow new mineral drip
through the circling ceiling
(loud strength of a darkness
only dark can reassure
(solid cavern’s holding,
to hollow the beautiful
carrying dark to hold me,
to empty the slippery
(The loud strength of a darkness
only dark can reassure
(solid cavern’s holding,
No beam will sink or angle,
open cavern’s holding,
in the rock to my humanness
unparticled and poured
to hollow the beautiful
(Into no circumference.
BUTTERFLY LULLABY
My wild indigo dusky wing
my mottled, broad-wing skipper,
a sleepy, dreamy dusty wing,
flying through my night.
My northern, southern, cloudy wing,
my spring azure, my crescent pearl,
a silver-spotted, sweet question mark,
sleeping in my sky.
A tiger swallowtail, harvester,
moving through my hours,
an eyed brown in the redwing dark,
wrapped softly in my words.
INTIMATIONS OF PREGNANCY
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