The ocean dips and surges in the heat,
heaves its breast, I almost said,
like any earnest supplicant at the altar of longing.
The bemused mystic who is half my mind –
well, maybe an eighth – asks why it isn’t enough
just to breathe, to sit among beach roses
beside the changing tide. If it’s all light
in the end, why not practice now, bleaching
out the shadows of the mind? Even stones
become light, you said last night, your love voice,
heating up, free-falling through the atmosphere
of our desire. What I understood
was your breath falling warm on my ear,
your breath melting my clamorous thoughts.
Did I say anything back? This morning,
watching your tailpipe’s cloud dissolve
in the air, I wanted to eat stones, dress myself
in a shark’s slinky scales that will slice
anyone who runs his hands along my thigh
the wrong way, which is any way that isn’t yours.
Tomorrow, I’ll feel the same.
Betsy Sholl of Portland is Maine’s poet laureate. Her most recent collection of poetry is “Late Psalm,” published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2004.
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