On a day grayer than a bitter sea
I return from the ocean.
My heart red and bitter
as an ant, so obedient, so familiar,
dragged by simple time into the habits of blood,
twitching into and out of shadows,
twitching to sister-skin,
my body drawn like an insect
to this sweet sick dirt.
I return to this country,
so huge, but nothing grand.
The great trees here entomb me.
Snow angels haunt the air.
The plane burns down the runway
long silver flame
trembling.
Trembling, already I am up to my chin
in gravel and poplars, pines,
already surrounded.
The ghosts loom out of the snow
like fantastic birds
dancing
all plume and pierce of talons
striking, driving into skin,
touching, as lovers touch,
or warriors in ancient battles,
the way a murderer grasps weaker flesh
mothers touch their husbands,
who touch their daughters,
in turn, brothers, sisters,
those elaborate battles of small blood,
those memories of a dead dog
and a dead woman who left me
alone in the blue-green world
this white frozen world,
this country
trees, rocks, sky
and streets, the voice of my friend
in her attic of masks and paint:
this is the city where something
is always about to happen
and never does–
streets I stumbled down
laughing, crying, the two words blur,
I dance down the pavement and my feet sting
I had to be born somewhere
I had to be born
the eternal surprise
and I am touched idiotically
by snow, the memory
of my five-year-old soul
believing deeply in diamonds
under the streetlights, blanketing
all the fields, the talcum of seraphs.
I come home
hating this language,
these words, my stories,
my eyes, hands, wishing
only to forget the clamour
inside that has brought me here
again
trolls sleep under
the pink bridge of my tongue
I kiss my mother's cheek
I reach to kiss the sky
Sticky pine sap is on my chin
I have been holding trees
I kiss the door of an old house
I slip down to the creek
on the edge of the city
and kneel to kiss the ice
my lip bleeds a little
I am not surprised.