Throwback

Trouble enough trims my sails, drops anchor.
The wind’s up, would you like to go with me,
love, where we can fill the god’s hands,
the little one with the big heart–
he, or she, keeps us safe, keeps us sailing
but not on water, that’s mirage.
Wife screams, silence deafens, who is this now
knocking on my own heart’s door? A circle
never bending unless it breaks, pieces
of entirely personal history
flying everywhere.

We settled nowhere we would not feel want,
our bodies welded, our breath coming slow,
for this was no boat, you were not my wife.
You my lover, I yours, we the god’s own.
God that cries out with our passionate cry
of completion. Storms blow up, but die down.
It is the big god with the same size heart
as I, as you, though your body is small.
You fit all my life inside your large soul
where sleep arrives with all its ritual
dangling rings from earlobes, all the sacred
places of the body we prove exists
between our own, where the dark gives off light.

Now kiss my flesh, let me feel your river.
A lake is more than ocean, it’s too small
not to have borders, to spurn horizons.
Would you love me if I am atavist
with claws and fangs and grunt when I skulk off
to look for fresh meat to bring back to you . . .

(23 June 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander