sails all night.
Our dreams are the flags
of little ships,
your penis the mast
of one of the breeziest sailboats,
& my breasts floating,
half in & half out
of the water,
are like messages in bottles.
There is no point to this poem.
What the sea loses
always turns up again;
it is only a question of shores.
Living Happily Ever After
We used to strike sparks
off each other.
Our eyes would meet
or our hands,
& the blue lightning of love
would sear the air.
Now we are soft.
We loll
in the same sleepy bed,
skin of my skin,
hair of my head,
sweat of my sweat—
you are kin,
brother & mother
all in one,
husband, lover, muse & comforter;
I love you even better
without sparks.
We are pebbles in the tide
rolling against each other.
The surf crashes above us;
the irregular pulse
of the ocean drives our blood,
but we are growing smooth
against each other,
Are we living happily ever after?
What will happen
to my love of cataclysms?
My love of sparks & fire,
my love of ice?
Fellow pebble,
let us roll
against each other.
Perhaps the sparks are clearer
under water.
The Surgery of the Sea
At the furthermost reach of the sea
where Atlantis sinks under the wake of the waves,
I have come to heal my life.
I knit together like a broken arm.
The salt fills in the crevices of bone.
The sea takes all the fragments of my lives
& grinds them home.
I wake up in a waterbed with you.
The sea is singing & my skin
sings against your skin.
The waves are all around us & within.
We sleep stuck to each other’s salt.
I am healing in your arms.
I am learning to write without the loss of love.
I am growing deeper lungs here by the sea.
The waves are knives; they glitter & cut clean.
This is the sea’s surgery.
This is the cutting & the healing both.
This is where bright sunlight warms the bone,
& fog erases us, then makes us whole.
After the Earthquake
After the first astounding rush,
after the weeks at the lake,
the crystal, the clouds, the water lapping the rocks,
the snow breaking under our boots like skin,
& the long mornings in bed…
After the tangos in the kitchen,
& our eyes fixed on each other at dinner,
as if we would eat with our lids,
as if we would swallow each other…
I find you still
here beside me in bed,
(while my pen scratches the pad
& your skin glows as you read)
& my whole life so mellowed & changed
that at times I cannot remember
the crimp in my heart that brought me to you,
the pain of a marriage like an old ache,
a husband like an arthritic knuckle.
Here, living with you,
love is still the only subject that matters.
I open to you like a flowering wound,
or a trough in the sea filled with dreaming fish,
or a steaming chasm of earth
split by a major quake.
You changed the topography.
Where valleys were,
there now are mountains.
Where deserts were,
there now are seas.
We rub each other,
but we do not wear away.
The sand gets finer
& our skins turn silk.
VII
FROM
Witches
(1981)
To the Goddess
Goddess, I come to you
my neck wreathed with rosebuds,
my head filled with visions of infants,
my eyes open to your rays of illumination,
my palms open to your silver nails,
my vagina & my womb gaping
to be filled by your radiance…
O goddess, I would be a worthy vessel.
Impermanence—all is impermanence.
The cock rises to fall again;
the woman fills only to empty
in a convulsion that shakes the world;
the poet grows to become a voice
only to lose that voice when death takes her.
A stroke cancels her upon the page—
& yet I open her book & a chill wind blows from eternity.
Goddess, I come to you
wreathed in tears, in losses, in whistling winds.
I wrap the witch’s herbs around my neck
to ward off the impermanence that is our common fate.
The herbs dry & crumble,
as my face grows the map of my anxieties,
& my daughter leaps up like a vine
twining around the trellis of impermanence.
O goddess, teach me to praise loss,
death
Our dreams are the flags
of little ships,
your penis the mast
of one of the breeziest sailboats,
& my breasts floating,
half in & half out
of the water,
are like messages in bottles.
There is no point to this poem.
What the sea loses
always turns up again;
it is only a question of shores.
Living Happily Ever After
We used to strike sparks
off each other.
Our eyes would meet
or our hands,
& the blue lightning of love
would sear the air.
Now we are soft.
We loll
in the same sleepy bed,
skin of my skin,
hair of my head,
sweat of my sweat—
you are kin,
brother & mother
all in one,
husband, lover, muse & comforter;
I love you even better
without sparks.
We are pebbles in the tide
rolling against each other.
The surf crashes above us;
the irregular pulse
of the ocean drives our blood,
but we are growing smooth
against each other,
Are we living happily ever after?
What will happen
to my love of cataclysms?
My love of sparks & fire,
my love of ice?
Fellow pebble,
let us roll
against each other.
Perhaps the sparks are clearer
under water.
The Surgery of the Sea
At the furthermost reach of the sea
where Atlantis sinks under the wake of the waves,
I have come to heal my life.
I knit together like a broken arm.
The salt fills in the crevices of bone.
The sea takes all the fragments of my lives
& grinds them home.
I wake up in a waterbed with you.
The sea is singing & my skin
sings against your skin.
The waves are all around us & within.
We sleep stuck to each other’s salt.
I am healing in your arms.
I am learning to write without the loss of love.
I am growing deeper lungs here by the sea.
The waves are knives; they glitter & cut clean.
This is the sea’s surgery.
This is the cutting & the healing both.
This is where bright sunlight warms the bone,
& fog erases us, then makes us whole.
After the Earthquake
After the first astounding rush,
after the weeks at the lake,
the crystal, the clouds, the water lapping the rocks,
the snow breaking under our boots like skin,
& the long mornings in bed…
After the tangos in the kitchen,
& our eyes fixed on each other at dinner,
as if we would eat with our lids,
as if we would swallow each other…
I find you still
here beside me in bed,
(while my pen scratches the pad
& your skin glows as you read)
& my whole life so mellowed & changed
that at times I cannot remember
the crimp in my heart that brought me to you,
the pain of a marriage like an old ache,
a husband like an arthritic knuckle.
Here, living with you,
love is still the only subject that matters.
I open to you like a flowering wound,
or a trough in the sea filled with dreaming fish,
or a steaming chasm of earth
split by a major quake.
You changed the topography.
Where valleys were,
there now are mountains.
Where deserts were,
there now are seas.
We rub each other,
but we do not wear away.
The sand gets finer
& our skins turn silk.
VII
FROM
Witches
(1981)
To the Goddess
Goddess, I come to you
my neck wreathed with rosebuds,
my head filled with visions of infants,
my eyes open to your rays of illumination,
my palms open to your silver nails,
my vagina & my womb gaping
to be filled by your radiance…
O goddess, I would be a worthy vessel.
Impermanence—all is impermanence.
The cock rises to fall again;
the woman fills only to empty
in a convulsion that shakes the world;
the poet grows to become a voice
only to lose that voice when death takes her.
A stroke cancels her upon the page—
& yet I open her book & a chill wind blows from eternity.
Goddess, I come to you
wreathed in tears, in losses, in whistling winds.
I wrap the witch’s herbs around my neck
to ward off the impermanence that is our common fate.
The herbs dry & crumble,
as my face grows the map of my anxieties,
& my daughter leaps up like a vine
twining around the trellis of impermanence.
O goddess, teach me to praise loss,
death
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