USA

bisquits@owt.com

On the Island

You lean across the car, look out my window
at lava beds, imagine when they were molten.

I look out your window at the ocean,
water moving in the rhythm of two bodies

coming together. We apply sunscreen
to each other's backs, to the skin we cannot reach.

Your fingers pause along my spine
a moment longer. Your eyes, warm as hands,

move down me when I come up from the water.
We have left our spouses on the mainland.

For them, we take pictures of you with one friend,
me with another - any combination

but the two of us. We're afraid it will show.
In the evening, we make everyone mai tais,

mix guava nectar, pineapple spears, Jamaican
and Martinique rums, blend them to the color

of the grenadine sky, till the tastes we take
surprise our tongues, make us look

at each other and smile. We retire to rooms
separated by a common wall. The night air

never cools. I awake, my skin a little burned,
from a dream of you as the red hibiscus opens.

Assumed

Lorri isn't short for anything,
like the French Lorraine
or Lorelei, German for alluring
and the siren of the river Rhine.

I was almost Candace, Greek
for glittering, flowing white
and the title of Ethiopian queens.
After my mother told me,
I mourned the name for days.

~

By birth, a Hicks; by adoption,
a Lambert; by marriage, Foster
then Smith - a gradual watering down.

~

I try on the names of birds -
avocet, vireo, kestrel -
choose the diminutive wren,
a branch-colored bird,
an invisible source of song.

I believe my middle name, Lee -
Old English for from the meadow.
I remember being there,
immaterial, watching
the changeable lay of the light.

I release my maiden and married names,
take as my own silhouette.

Where It Touches

Rain taps one pumpkin
then another. A spider spins
an egg sac on the spade.
Under the silver maple tree,
the hammock fills with leaves.
A gust of wind - one falling leaf
spirals upward.

Drops of rain make circles
on the surface of my tea
and on random words
in the open book of poems:

call
hinge


with

One by one, the starlings
in the maple quiet. All at once
they fly away. Rain darkens
the arm of the redwood chair.

© All Copyright, Lorri Lambert-Smith.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.