top of page

Waking

*

When wakefulness first flickered

in Eve's tea-colored eyes,

what seized her first attention?

--the fact, I am! A joyful cry,

and suddenly the dust of dreams

welled up in flesh to breathe the sunlight.

Just as now the landscape

exhales heavily, and I with it,

early on a Sunday morning, when

mist is scattered in a distance that hovers

knee-high. On a similar dawn, I recall

my hands curled on the sheets

and the morning variations

of pink or gold or gray

sprinkling brilliance on the walls

Such quiet for such movement,

the gentle unaffected women

hover near and tuck me in

and a sharp crackle of words

echoes from the sterile hallway

as I turn my eyes to the ceiling

*

At first pain, whether in stubbed toe or childbirth,

Eve must have gasped in startled horror.

I seize my own breath and think:

Such is the price of wisdom.

Unawareness blazing furiously 

in know now, I am.

Every fiber, muscle, cell,

each suddenly in agony aware,

I am, I am.

*

The mist brushes the 

windshield like thin wisps of hair.

I've never felt aloneness so condensed:

drops of water hanging from tree-tips

and the low growl as I shift

from fourth to fifth gear.

As of late I've woken easily,

staring about in the dim gray mist that

hums just to be.

*

In darkness, I held my breath,

the slow hissing of lungs and throat halted

to listen. Hush. Stillness, to listen

beyond the dripping liquids

that pushed into my veins. Would

the magic flow through and cool me

like mist rolling over hills?

I expect the radiating heat in my body to hum;

a choir of tissues in full-throated song.

bottom of page