Of wolves, flowering

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              Begging the sky is something I

have watched  mothers do & talking to

it, even now, feels like betrayal. Tinged

 

with resentment, all those times the sky ignored

the glowing bellies                  the fish & moons &

small pink suns.                       Too much water is

borne of me,                                 the sky probably

thinks to itself,                                   but tips more

over into                    the open mouth of the earth.

Gets nothing back                but strange wet floss,

the white suspended.                Maybe that’s why,

now,         it doesn’t have an answer for the lupin.

 

The lupin is my mother’s             favourite flower.

Buds in summertime             our favourite valley.

When the green                            arrives, it swirls.

Purple with          the daisies across the hillsides.

 

Summers ago,                      my mother tried to teach me how

to make a strong rope knot, trying to say to me, the only way

to live here, under this sky, is to make a child                    & to

give it everything                        you could never give yourself

& I could not                             correct her without hurting her

so I cracked                                an egg over her head & I said,

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“Turning a child into a god                   only breeds monsters.”

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A rose is a mouth with no teeth

 

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I ask you how many horizons you believe in.

 

You say two. One behind your teeth. One behind the sun.

 

I meet you at where your hot neck ends. Where it entwines itself with the daffodils and thick red vines.

 

You undo your tongue from your mouth and pass it to me like a spare key. I treasure the wetness that hangs from it like dewdrops. Clings to pink flesh. I treasure the way your saliva links wetly between our hands.

 

I know you had a name once. Something like Europa or Maha, something with an old vowel to bloat in your chest and hang like a drum. I know you had a name once but now it seems reckless.

 

There are a thousand songs left to sing. Every name is a song. I don’t know where a song goes once it is sung. I think a voice is a soul. I don’t know how the throat can be ripe for that.

 

There is laughter pealing, a yellow bell. There are gulls who cry, an ocean above. The hum in your chest, unfurling. Wet muscle claiming so many things as things. Wet muscle claiming so many things as things.

 

Try speaking this into an oyster sometime. Salt staining fat. Take both my lips if you want.

 

The best I can hope for is that this passes through you once, softly.