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IN MY BODY OF SKIN

When I was a nightingale I sang
When I was a serpent I swallowed
my voice spume blown from a wave
a sound too thin for earthworms

With memories older than Prometheus
I remember the time when time was birthed
the sky appeared
sudden light wind and water
where blind valves closed
on a single grain of sand

In my body of skin of moss of clover
I touch fingers with fingers
lips with lips
the exposed tip of the heart

Seed work sun work earth work
If pansies are for thoughts
I pick them early in the morning
so they last

Lake-summer days I climb the hill
drink the sky and pose like Millet's peasant
listening to an invisible lark

With a pocketful of seeds I sit
peeling an orange under a static sun
attentive to the sound of pine cones clicking open

The child sleeps in my shadow
and walks beside me
following from birth
moving as I move
We cling together like small animals

The well is dry the cup empty
and gravity's a long way down

REPRIEVE

Every night's a rehearsal for that
final cut of soil, I give up
eyes, ears, pulse, returning
all my loans until there's
nothing to affirm
nothing to deny.

Night breathes me in, adrift
under membrane of sky,
I wear my skin like a shadow,
thoughts sifting to sand.
All motion gone.

Something lies between us
sequestered in calm
delicate as leaf edge
almost visible


Time turns pale
but here in in the ripening darkness
there is no such harmn
as we unravel dreams
and launch a thousand notes in a thousand bottles

Dawn grants reprieves
sun scouring the air
glazing the lawn
laying bare the anthills of morning
and the past rising hard and clean out of green earth.

Part by part, I reclaim my body,
willing it back to the spine.
How well we are joined,
head, heart,
silk of sinew,
flesh and bone

and you
confirming all the old miracles.

THRESHOLD

She holds the oldest word she knows
cupped in her hand, smooth as stone warmed by the sun,
rubs it gently but it won't release its secret.

Last night it kissed her on the lips,
kept her company a while as she fed it,
held it up to the light before letting go.

Today she moves from room to room going nowhere.

Fragment by fragment she gathers thin
membranes of sound and whatever knocks
she says

Come in.

in her poetry collection Between One Future and the Next
(Papier-Mache Press 1955)

© All Copyright, Ruth Daigon.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.