I may not have loved since entering
this purgatorio but I have known attractions
fired by recognition
of another body
in whom I recognize
some ancient home
the here-not-here, by rock & sway
of crowded boat, my form giving
against the solemn jag of craggy cliffs
through dark orifices of another war
where some cite the wine-dark sea
of avengers, mourned back
to battle and then dead
whose sons return to repeat them
until all lines of origin are erased
I, too, descend
from ancient clamor,
silenced now:
carbon fixed first inside familiar cells
of marine life: phytoplankton, algae,
buried & altered over eons.
I slept beneath you,
before fire, before when
rough-gloved hands
came to enact what they called
refining
pulling apart
my ancient form: ethylene, propylene,
remnants fastened
into intricate chains.
I know to be molded,
to take the heat of this earth
made hot enough to burn its own
past the capacity for return
I know the sudden cool that
follows, before this
float, where I fill, sink,
shatter
having bottled illicit toasts
swallowed by shrubs in midnight parks,
passed hand to hand in fallout
aftermaths, left beside desert rocks,
emptied by those dying
of thirst to cross
as leaf dies into another life
as whale becomes carcass becomes
food, light, shelter, home.
as bone into mineral, into soil
into tree, then leaf again
by the light of a distant star
but i cannot rot, only break
into finer pieces,
some sand-sized
but never sand:
ever eroded
never transformed
denied my next death
i may only attach myself
to blood, lung, womb, milk,
to inner ear but not to hearing,
to mouth but never song,
to heart & longing
without capacity to beat
& then cease beating.
The living make of me a reef
& come. They flower on me,
then go.
Pulled from our long burial
we are deep time made impatient,
forever arriving
at new shores
as ourselves
unable to become
anything
else.