Ashe

for Maria Teresa

1

Never stop moving, world. You are my own
celebration. I never stop telling
you my love of, for, and because of your
existence. A galaxy is not much
beside a human being in his chains,
or hers. She brings to life in her body
the spawn that moves all the eggs it conjures
into splitting apart, seeking its own
double through the avenues of this world
and finding him or her, the universe
without end, no matter what force against
her body stalls her, she stirs, she returns
to the unending motion in all things
she loves ridding the universe of hate.

2

Angleterre, or was it Angloterra–
French or Portuguese, corruption of birth
she threw off like clothes, the sun at its height,
the power in her rising and rising
until there was no stopping it flowing
through the endless heat of her own lava.

O there never was a way not to tell
her story. She liked to die in her sleep
and wake to find hands and legs all her own
to let her live as long as the city
was here, someone like this young man to walk
with her slowly down the long street and back.

So she was named that, she would name herself
like any child who was her own . . . Adore.

3

She slept. Juan looked in on her. She was still
all the time he stood with the door open.

(5 February 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander