‘Tidal Pull’ & Other Poems

I want you slowly,

the way a fern unfolds

beneath another fern.

Yesterday we spoke of tides,

of moonlight and the supple

gravity of chalices,

the body and the bread. Today

we speak of clay and the way

it holds water like the waves

hold light, how the well

behind your grandmother’s farm

never went dry. I want

to be the vase that holds

the stems we gather in the meadow,

the wild lace and bluebells

that grow around the well.

Tomorrow your hands

will brush against my skin

as the swallows perch on the fence

or dip between the currents of sky.

And we will speak of willows,

the soft stones beneath the river

or laid out along the shore,

the stones beneath the stones,

how they hold the ocean in place

and are molded by it at once,

how all this is my body.

I tell them I’m a pigeon since

they’ve never seen a minnow,

because sometimes the eye is

too narrow to witness the river.

Our vision likes to trick us by cast-

ing memories into the sea.

Beware of the serpent, the wrinkled

mapmaker warns. Never trust a creature

with no hands. So I move

from stone to stone like a child

who’s been told not dirty her skirt,

skipping between the ripples of worlds.

There’s a shimmer beneath the sand

that whispers of gold, that holds

a memory of morning. Perhaps my skin

is more wind than ripple, invisible

unless you know beginnings. They

say there are birds that swim beneath

the waves, and rivers hidden in the sky.

There are islands of fire and mountains

of sand that have never known

the thin language of lines.

What is your name? The mapmakers asks,

but I’ll wait for the river to answer.

Tell me what you can see

and I’ll tell you who I am.

I want world peace, they say

after the national anthem plays and they’ve

strapped on their nude heels.

Or maybe they save it

for a stained-glass prayer,

a litany for a world in pieces.

I don’t oppose this longing.

May the string of your rosary hold together

every fragment of your femininity.

May the red of your blistered feet

help you forget the colour

of your unfulfilled longing.

But for the rest of us,

the women whose voices have been plucked

like feathers from a hen,

the women whose fires

shake against the reined

volcanos of our hips,

may we be spared

from anyone who claims God

never meant us to be more than this.

May they just stay silent

and step aside as we take back

the whirled pieces of our wild

and maybe even grant us the title

to a small patch of land – say, our bodies,

our one piece of the world.

Emily, they tell me you’ve been measuring        the gossamer threads of grief –

that you’ve retreated to the spaces        where the dim holds its breath.

In the evenings I seek you in the meadow,         but the gazing grains have faded.

Winter has enfolded the lilies.         Someone must bear witness

to this stillness, but Emily –         how easy it would be to weave

an identity from frost,         to grieve what has not been lost.

The leaves drape heavy with dusk        and they tell me that you have left us –

that every feather is eventually          drawn into the setting sun.

How are we to know what lies beyond the west –        where the carriage will lead us?

Emily, if only you could teach us to see        how unceasingly the dawn

holds open its arms to the night        and how the white lily returns

to meet the morning –          a golden resurrection with no end.