I saw her, out past the first
waves, swaying
on an undulant stalk.
At my feet, she’d left
her wisdom and bones –
unsortable pile on the shore.
Then I was under a tree,
its trunk twined
with a thick helix of vine,
a twinned upthrusting,
its intermingled foliage
more green than black.
Stepping from the dark,
she held cupped hands
to my lips.
“Everything
is risk,” she whispered.
“If you doubt, it becomes
sand trickling
through skeletal fingers.
Believe, and it’s water
from what deep well.”