The first time a lover held me
I was young
and gave myself
to creation.
I was hand, body, liquid
ruled by dark seas
that swallow the edges of land
and give them up to another place.
I am still this measure of brine,
ancient carbon, the pull of iron
across linked and desperate distances,
beginning and end together
the way sunlight on skin
is still connected
to the fiery storms of its origins.
I’m thinking this today,
candling eggs
to see inside the oval light
which yolks are quickened
with a spot of blood.
Once these were wilder birds
who would go to any lengths
to follow the magnetic longings
of stars.
Oh, makers of eggs,
this living is such a journey
inside a breaking-open world,
the way a turtle free of its shell
believes in water,
getting its bearings
across the stretch of sand,
that distance to dark water
breaking, gaining, running
for shelter,
but when it swims,
it remembers the sand
it is ruled by.