poet and mother and daughter.
CHAIN OF WOMEN
These are the seasons Persephone promised
as she turned on her heel;
the ones that darken, till green no longer
bandages what I feel—
Now touches of gold stipple the branches,
promising weeks of time
to fade through, finding the footprints
she left as she turned to climb.
GHAZAL FOR A POETESS
Many the nights that have passed,
But I remember
The river of pearls at Fez
And Seomar whom I loved.
—“Laurence” Hope, 1903
The corners of the frontispiece yellow from their darker edges.
Aching eyes lift in tremolo from their darker edges.
Moon lit your blood in the jasmine-blooming gardens;
bodies still glide in tableau from their darker edges.
Your “hungry soul” laps at the page with its “burning, burning”;
your moans send out an echo from their darker edges.
Silk covers your arms, your fingers, your lips, your voice.
Your black lines weave a trousseau from their darker edges.
Wind strikes at the palm trees where you walked;
fronds shake like tousled arrows from their darker edges.
Your nights spread quiet over “parched and dreary” sand.
Finches fill them till they glow from their darker edges.
MEETING MAMMOTH CAVE, EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT
In the night to my humanness
the unparticled has poured,
no beam will sink or angle,
no slow new mineral drip
through the circling ceiling
(loud strength of a darkness
only dark can reassure
(solid cavern’s holding,
to hollow the beautiful
carrying dark to hold me,
to empty the slippery
(The loud strength of a darkness
only dark can reassure
(solid cavern’s holding,
No beam will sink or angle,
open cavern’s holding,
in the rock to my humanness
unparticled and poured
to hollow the beautiful
(Into no circumference.
BUTTERFLY LULLABY
My wild indigo dusky wing
my mottled, broad-wing skipper,
a sleepy, dreamy dusty wing,
flying through my night.
My northern, southern, cloudy wing,
my spring azure, my crescent pearl,
a silver-spotted, sweet question mark,
sleeping in my sky.
A tiger swallowtail, harvester,
moving through my hours,
an eyed brown in the redwing dark,
wrapped softly in my words.
INTIMATIONS OF PREGNANCY
I never thought that this immediate
A groping fist would prove me what I am
I am not a woman
My vigil is too restless
I never thought till now I could be had.
I can’t forget you, that’s the awful thing.
I am not a woman.
I curse what I have been
I am solidifying like a rock
That turns inside itself each time she turns
WALK WITH ME
Walk with me just a while, body of sunlight,
body of grass, surface of trees,
head bending to the earth we have tasted,
body of death, surface of leaves.
Sinking hooves in the mud by the river,
root of the live earth, live through my body.
Sinking body, walk in me now.
TWO BODIES
Two bodies, balanced in mass and power,
move in a bed through the dark,
under the earliest human hour.
A night rocks, like an ark.
They reach through the ceilings of the night,
tall as animals.
Through their valleys bends the light
of their fertile hills.
Two bodies breathe their close hellos
through
