She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for
you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one
hundred favorite aggies.
She has always been there, my
darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull
middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face
it, I have been momentary.
vA luxury. A bright red sloop in the
harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car
window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that.
She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical
growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees
to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
has placed wild flowers at the
window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set
forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by
Michelangelo,
done this with her legs spread out
in the
terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are
there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.
She has
also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads
privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face
flushed with a song and their little sleep.
I give you back your
heart.
I give you permission --
for the fuse inside her,
throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the
burying of her wound --
for the burying of her small red wound alive
--
for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the
drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee,
for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call --
the
curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at
the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious
call.
She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself
and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She
is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash
off.