C A R E N K I N G C H O I
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.