Her cheeks all flushed with dreaming, eyelids fluttering like wings.
In talcum puffs, her milky breath hangs damply on the air.
A scattering of tousled hair is streaked across the day.
I watch her as I work, as dawn comes yawning through the fields,
With half my mind entangled in the rhythm of her breath.
I feel, as much as see, the soft cadenza of her sigh
As she settles on the pillows, in a world unto herself.
Oh! I'm tender as an oyster and as open as the sea!
This heart keeps spraying scatter-shot affection on the world.
There are faces in the foliage and voices in the well,
And who can say the sky is not a cradle for the clouds?
I feel the soil dancing with the bones of all my mothers,
The thrum of ancient lullabies that tumbled down the genome,
Down ever-wider hips and hearts that hungered to be filled,
To be shucked and sucked and cast aside at last like paper cups.
Behind the water veil, there is muscle in this blood.
Some hearts, I think, were built like shells fixed open at the hinge,
With strength enough to flex and bear what passes through the gates,
To filter and to shelter without ever clamping shut.
So sleep, sweet sky. I cannot help but hold your shifting moods
In the cradle of my heart, and feel them whirl and dissipate.
There's a cadence I was born to sing; I'll sing it now to thee:
Child, let all your weather blow through me; just pour it all on me!
No comments:
Post a Comment