Heaven's Undertow

Nobody coming or going, even the wind is still, though saltwater laps like a cloud
the sky’s shores.
I am in my element. I have a new song. Wanta hear it? Nah, just sing it, sing it through.
So Paula does. The room shuffles its feet.
No takers.
I go home with Christina. Melindra’s on night shift. Rosemary’s waiting tables. I am numb.
But not for long.
You know how the earth finds water when the witching wand comes around, dowsing . . .
That’s what Christina does.
With me.
I’m what she wants, I guess, I know she likes to share her bed with me, even now . . .
The song goes:

Come to bed, bed down your skin, our love’s lost.
Water me down to my thirstiest root.
I’ll keep you here till you begin to grow,
till your leaves appear, till your flowers show,

. . . and continues until Tony follows with a coda and the piano goes quiet,
drums and bass and Paula finished, letting me look long for the final note.
It’s that word thirstiest I have to change. I’ll look for it days and nights. I may never find
anything but most thirsty and even then I’ll change it back and forth . . . I don’t know how
to say I fail . . .
then:

Let me go back to seed, I’ll come on home
when you call, I won’t be far, I’ll come home
when little stars grow where the moon is full,
Winter, spring, summer and the ship sets sail . . .

So the battle never quits, the odds are long, a heart that’s full can’t find a stopping place.
What’s it like to sleep through the night? I kiss her all over, she does the same for me.
If she’s a river I’m a rock, if she’s the sea the moon takes me down: heaven’s undertow.
Heaven’s a hardass place where planets whirl, black holes flourish, space for a song to die.

(28 September 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander