Two Poems

After Whitman

The boat adrift on the lake is me. The seaplane lifting
its floats, leaving a trail of spray as it leaves
for the pale blue, me lifting. The truck releasing
brakes as the truck brings, me, snapdragons,
the high pitch of songs birds. I am the mother
on the bicycle traveling the trail.

I captain the speedboat, my hand steady on the wheel.
Whomever has warm limbs soaked through with sun,
those are my limbs also and they are beautiful to me.
I am beautiful and everything I see is beautiful. My toenails
beautiful, painted or unpainted. My hunger beautiful
earned or unearned. I feel it and am content.

Have bears left claw marks on the bark?
Do you douse yourself with cool water
and know that you are beautiful?
I am sunk in the loam. When my hips
turn, earth finds an axis.

Dictation from Fog

All that I love of spring—my daughter
burrowing under my arm, delight
in scavenged broken iron, that she has kept
company with Orion–will be forgotten.
At five I jumped on the hotel bed in Greece,
drank cocoa and smoke made of flowers.
I remember. In the coliseum, we track
the mystery: who’s alive. I have walked on
the cracked Roman bricks in Carcassonne.
I think of the soul, deep drum that gathers bones
like an unbounded universe gathers wings.

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