Monthly Archives: October 2019

ii asks

As I sleep away my mourning, grass walks, asks, “what
is it that the children of rain remember most?” The story
answers, waters the plaint – As I seep away my morning,
grass is worm is root as this poem is awake with heal-

“How does the strange earth bear fruit, does it know
which road shall converge into dark & which one shall
be the rabbit?” I stand as it all begins to flower & then
smoke – the fruit bearing earth now rustles its feathers-

Open water

do we in our moving
move toward life or death

do we in turn sell, burn & prosper   do we raze our haven   as death?

Stroke by stroke drawing us
Out there?   Father of rhythms,
deep wave, mother,
There is no out there.
All is open.
Open Water.   Open I.

Open hearth   Open stone       crucible of love     crux of I

Women, ships, lost voices.
Whatever has dissolved into our waves.
I a lost voice
moving, calling you
on the edge of the moment that is now the center.
From the open sea.

Whatever has dissolved in our bones
as rust
recalls –
we recall the tender
the edges recall, the stone, the work of the sea as the breaking out of open water.

—
Lines in bold are from Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Outer Banks”

Poet as difference

Poet as difference
the smellsweet
    wrungtooth, it keeps us in guess
    in

deference to differ
the snuckroot
    earthsweat, as blade wishes blood
    in

rain – the differed
the nailred
    skyrust, as air as parch as wet as pain

—

that deep inner place where we have been taught to fear all difference—to kill it or ignore it

Audre Lorde