Illumination
Twilight elongates: Smooth,
Barbed at the ends.
You squint against
the nimbus shimmer
Of expanding night—
Recalescence.
Eyes widen now.
Essence of perhapses, Scents that twitter, Chirping swallows.
Flavors laden on heavy air
Edging something like
Barn owls.
(A hint:
as if in darkness
the dim beam
would catch
the shard
of glass.)
Stirring wings that stir Hidden pools
Long since settled.
And there...
(Hold your breath...)
Is the mirage to be savored,
But quick
For it dissolves in the stream
Of your
exhale.
from Bodies of Water
VIII.
Someone asked why my body is always turning up in poems and I
reply that I am saving myself from sacrifice through a
figurative feeding of my parts. I say, we are washing up on
shore regularly, girls tossed upon the sand by every ocean- or
upon the muddy bank by the side of a river which carries scores
of us in its currents, sometimes whole, sometimes not. Recently
we received another torso from the waves. This gift from the
waters is waiting to be claimed or at least identified. She
would not be so forlorn if someone would come and get her with
her sapphire stud in one ear and her little silver hoop in the
other. Oh magicians, is this what you do with the women you saw
in half? Can someone tell me where are the reports? Girls
tangled in the reeds by the sides of a lake. Girls fished out of
the bay behind a waterfront restaurant.
