The blades of my scapula
fuse to the warm soft dewy olive
of his chest. The holiness of our
repeatedly devoted elbows
has rubbed callous edges into round
rose-burgundy gems along
an outcropping of our holding.
We are hugged closely to a
golden hill on the ridgeline
as an anemone attached to serpentine
is washed over and back again
by a sea of dreaming,
a sea rushing through us too.
I wonder if its fluid doing the dance
or creature, swiftly around each tendril
in soothing underwater violence rinsing
repeatedly and disappearing
as I roll over
after his night laughter has woken me.
I tell him,
with open wrinkled palms
how I realized
I could bring us to the lake
we could swim in the narrow bowl
of green mountains and their gray rocks
we would move as ink ribboned
around our muscular limbs, time
would hold us at the surface between water,
trees, buzzing, water skeeters,
minnows, stones, dirt, purple sky.
All day I am struck
seeing from where she crouched on the shore
on a rock wrapped in a towel
after untangling her pale body over thick
dark water, spread out like that
before collapsing
to swim back, bouyed as a net
tied between elements on all sides.
The terrain of my body
fresh from dream,
blood turned to precious dusky ink,
my shoulders twin mountains
and lake, Willoughby,
which is itself the girl
of Sabin’s pasture, of ravens
nesting in a slate quarry
seen from above,
of white
stark sparkling
winter
of a golden room
with walls that ricocheted
melody
against us
suns ago
revolving now as I wake
to the delight
of another body
to another timeline
pulled from the arms of dreaming
here.
Early morning,
In the loft, up the ladder,
is the body in the bed. Is olive skin
that smells of salt. sailboat.
Wide open window. Silver lupine
fog. Wild radish. Bright
yellow mustard flowers.
Bicep. Shoulder. Arrow.
Bow. Turkey feather. Down
comforter. Dark hair.
A tall buck with antlers
who woke us up in the middle of
the night,
that we rolled over onto our bellies
to peer out the window and watch
walk away through night
and nasturtium.
Racoons. Barking foxes. Cold air. Breath.
And the sound of the ocean
filling the hollow
between my sternum and yours
between us and the shore.