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| before sunrise the cairns green point west quoddy head |
After Sappho
Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough,
Atop on the topmost twig, — which the pluckers forgot, somehow, —
Forget it not, nay; but got it not, for none could get it till now.
Sappho
One Girl
You come upon it slow I suppose,
the knowing: it unbuttons unzips unfastens unties
the night or day or any hour you take
your pleasure in, this pleasure, of letting
a hand touch you and not be appalled
it’d go all the way to the back and warm
itself as though over a low stove-stone
in the middle of the woods where she’d been gathering
the medicine for the puncture and in fact you’d met
in that woods because now that you were old
enough to heal yourself you set out shoeless
and without a map and only on an instinct and a strong
lung and thigh to climb the almost bald
places left smooth by glaciers and rain
and thousands of hands and feet and pain
and more than that but who would guess unless
meeting unless letting the words once hardening
in the kiln under your tongue and sent
a storehouse a corn-crib a setting cask singed
and soaked would say ok who would know you’d go
years and years into the wilderness of cut
lovers or no it’s taken this long to say
they weren’t lovers they were men who made you
afraid they preyed for you it’s what they did
and what small prey can know from day to day
to day this is the day he’ll take you up and at that point
it’s all lost and after he’s pulling out
the best of you to throw like used lube oil
before the match he’ll laugh and you’ll crack
and scatter like her Fragments: painted
on hard clay shards, you know her: Sappho
and be nothing like her or will you, yes! exactly!
turning like this verse is, to the one who reaches
to touch to heal the leaky fistula and say ok yes let's
do this first
do this first
and you say thank you, yes, it’s just simply I want to
be asked.
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