today, this
is forgiveness:
the running tap
urging into warm the face
cloth and all along
the edges of the jar
of honey all along the ridges
the sticky drip of the last
time it's waiting to be
lifted to be warmed without
need to be scrubbed
kindly rubbed
of the slightest of any
thing but redeemed
and still just
as sweet
From Sleep
Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor discarded.
Walt Whitman
I imagine you
are sleeping I imagine you are
waking I imagine
you are muscled as muscled as any
cephalopod urgently called
forward along the bottoms of small
foreign spots: now glassless (I
imagine the pressure, don't you?) port
-holes key discretely re
-maining and all the sea
easing in and out as freely
as sleep. Tucked each and all
in our own houses of skin
our leg muscle seizes
we reach to relieve
to press and knead
(see: beneath the femur
a liberated fibula)
above our feet that in
our sleep as in our day
lays straight and stays
our standing straight
I imagine you
waking and taking
the heal of your hand
to your stiff calf (mass
age) (mass
age)
squeezing sleep
easing, after being beneath...or please
let me.
key/door
Facts are only
as interesting
as the possibilities
they open up to
the imagination.
Rebecca Elson
the key is in the lock
the knob appears
octagonal. and it is
glass. and i wonder
do you
know which one
will you grasp?
and i wonder
do you know
if you will turn it
and I wonder
in which way?
