Poetry
This Loam, This Levee
for B.
Becca Hall
You are watching what you do to me.
You watch the clouds pass
through my face, the sparrow flocks
flighting in my breath.
I am a boat of milk
hulled in bone.
I am the settling of hedge birds at dusk,
a long vigil of hushing.
And you one of the old gods,
horned and hunted,
scarred in skin runes, wounds of ink.
A long-running deer
come startled toward my fingers,
a flurry of circling.
You are nothing left but bones
and you are grinning.
What gives my feet in edges
this loam, this levee of breath?
Here is a wash basket
full of all kinds of blue.
Here is a mulberry doe.
The earth’s a belly in your hands.
The moon a fish, known to shadow.
The moon a hum trembling in our skin.