Musings #27
THE READING
They belong to a scientist, not a poet
she said, noticing
my crooked fingers. In palm lines
and hollow, she reads
three children.
How a beguiled mind strains
to render true.
I have only one. And yet,
what of the boy long before,
cocoa-skinned, his hair gold-green,
who turned to me and when grown
did not know
what to call me.
The third – no more than
a blocked egg, ectopic, another soul
intent on calling me mother.
SHE SITS ACROSS FROM ME
Beyond and about her shoulders,
her hair lifts-falls,
like waves that bend the sea.
She wonders why
she plays with it.
I tell her a rabbit crouches
in the moon, the sky
a hutch for stars.
The urgency is gone now –
the clutch and tangle
I once thought love.
After the rip asunder,
a deluge. After the deluge,
calm in the spent.
THE LURE OF CLAY
According to Sufi legend, God coaxed spirit
into form when he set the clay to dancing.
I want you in your body –
my eyes want to look at you,
my hands want to touch.
But what if
– just what if –
the surprise at death is this –
these bodies have been
what separate us,
keep us apart,
and rid of them
we are closer together
than ever –
as close as one. Still
it is so hard to let go,
to comprehend another way –
death’s ravaging beauty.