The first time I saw those eyes
in the shadows of your cupped palms,
they weren’t eyes at all.
They were wounds, half healed at the edges,
still open wide in the middle,
speechless and disbelieving.
So you can understand
why I couldn’t accept that posture
of flirtatious ease,
robes rippled like healing water.
You know that this present moment
we are asked to meet with equanimity,
with that serene contemplation
that turns your face
into a still lake under hovering fog
in early morning--
this moment, like every moment,
is stretched to bursting seams
with desperate pleas you can’t possibly answer.
In the summer,
my children’s sun-touched, sandaled feet
stomp joyfully on ground
once drenched with the blood
of another mother’s child.
So why be coy?
We carry these bodies like stone and steel,
but we are all exposure--
even you,
in the shadowy depths of your resting hands
(which have no time to rest),
in the hardly veiled welcome
of your parted thighs.
And from inside your carved enclosure,
this is what you say:
what else is there to do
with open flesh,
except to bless and wipe away the carnage,
stand on the edge of exposed nerve,
and go on answering,
go on creating the wounded world.
