The Alchemist
At thirteen, I was an alchemist:
I knew how the shape of a boy leaning over me
could be changed to the shape of a god.
If I closed my eyes, there became a hand
at the small of my back,
a hand at the wing of my shoulder,
a mouth in the air I could taste with my mouth.
My mother was just coming through the door;
It was afternoon.
The light through the curtains had turned the room gold.
Tin
I snagged against my love and then I married him for the ragged tin
of his arms. For his bulletproof heart. For his shocking hair. Every
night of our marriage we dreamt and woke with the taste of the sea in
our mouths. The sea which is grey in this part of the world, when it
isn't green. A handsome man with a spine I could kiss like I once kissed
the beads of the rosary or the links in a chain link fence. Because I
believed what I read with my lips: that between what we love, we are
loved. And the sparks of silver we see from the corners of our eyes
when there's nobody there are not hallucinations, at all, but trails of
light from one world to the next. That's what I mean when I say: I have
given him up. That he got away.
Caught Fire
The children smell better to us in the morning. Look how their
mothers have combed their hair. The light from the sidewalk shines
into their eyes and the light on the tops of their heads is more tender
than we've ever been to them. They are coming to school from their
dreams and their half-finished breakfasts; they are running to stand in
lines while the bells split the air and our voices behind them are waving
good-bye. The children's skin smells of bathwater, apples, their
mothers' last kisses, mistaken perfumes. By noon, they will smell like
animals more easy to recognize. Of salt and asphalt and the answers
they have been taught to believe are true. But in the morning, the
children carry the sun on their backs. Look how their hair shines with
it, and their arms. Look at the way we have all caught fire.
Hitting It Lucky
(the blue heron dream)
A blue heron swoops and hovers. Two old women stand gazing up;
their long, white hair loose in the radiant wind. When I taste a strand
of that hair, coarse and wild, I know I am one or the other of them.
The heron a sign to us that we'll live; that I've already lived to be one
hundred.
There is everywhere magic we knew to expect. We turn in time to see
fish with small silver wings, kite-gods, crossing the sky. The sky which
is both air and water now. The woman beside me — my great-aunt
or mother, my twin — is also one hundred years old. We stand at this
shoreline in thin blue dresses. The sea is warm though a hymn of
mountains rises beyond us, covered in snow. Over that border, the
breathless casinos of Reno or Vegas.
Hitting it lucky. Suddenly knowing that whatever happens will
happen twice. To come to a room where music is practiced with
others who love us, a long way from home. We have all just woken,
laughing, from dreams and wearing this morning each other's robes.
My cousins, my mother's sister's children, and I. My name in the song
that's been written for me. Heron: a bird that wades and flies, from the
root to creak, to cry, to scream.
I understand that these words are final. That I have arrived to hear
them sung.
Man
Think of him as metaphor, not man. The kiss not flesh but burned
into translucence. That was not your mouth on his and yet it was. And
something else. The mouth of some mute child, some other hunger.
Otherness. Think of him as what you wrecked yourself against
because the one who loves the wreckage wanted it. Wanted the broken
glass of promises with which to prick herself. Think of him as heat and
breath, as naked angel bending down to hold you to the flame. Think
of him as penance for your sins. Sins of omission, of desire. Kneel
down to the memory of him; repent, give thanks. Think of him as
messenger, not man. In the bible of your hands, the gods of touch, the
blood applauds. Longing is all mystery and faith. Remember that.
