That thin shadow across the road is not a snake
although it's black and disappears suddenly.
Fear enters me, as it did at the first instant of birth.
I came into light and now my hands
steer an inert machine that roars with flame
inside its pounding heart, an animal
bounding the ribboned highway.
At sunrise, a huge cloud-fish swam
in wind across the sky, belly an underglow
vermilion, brilliant veins of purple
reminding me, self-absorbed
head roaring with electrons --
let go, swim like a fish underwater.
I kick at the screen door when I want
to say, to this woman I share the world with
here's some pain, please take it away.
That sycamore alone in a field is a warrior.
I see him standing against the wind
defending the flame of sun at his center.
I see the light turning pink
as it falls from the sky, late afternoon
sheen like juice from sweetened strawberries.
Magenta, the veil of evening, I almost taste you.
The Ship
Dali, 1942-43
I want to be the body of a woman
lost in a storm of gray-green water
wearing a necklace of teeth
treading the ocean floor.
I'm searching
for the sister of my self. I feel the moon
pulling me, hips of wind-blown water.
I want to fall
tumbling in a dream of sea urchin
briny lips, nacre and mollusk.
My breasts are the bow of a schooner
scudding the white lip of a wave
a cargo of bleached bones
the world's ocean of sorrow.
I cross it, sailing
to a distant shoreline, my mother
blood muscle of my birth. I live
in a world of wounded beauty
want to feel
the torn-away fish-hooks
spasms of that voyage into light
when my body was hers.
Sea-wind gusts my seaweed hair.
Only a woman moans like this
flotsam and screaming gull.
I want to be born
whole as the windflower, anemone.
I want to be fragrance of humus.
Land ho! I tremble, the awful step forward.