I As You

One minute, you're talking to him,

the nearest minute the floor is above you, your

clothes are in the four comer of the scope

Shipwreck!-it was sunny and calm, and now

you're lying upon the cabin ceiling. Later,

you remember moments-when you reached above your head

and slid the small garbage can

away across the linoleum, little

solid Santa Maria, planet

tossed, softly on the outside into space,

and then, a certain quantity of time, passed, like rushing

matter, then he was sucking your breast and

you his forehead, then the play turned

like a carton upon its side, someone was whimpering, there was

tendernes moving like flame upon oil, your

body might be showing its muscle assemblages

love-frog touched with a wire, you heard him

hum like a phylum at its growth-tip, you were

saying I have affection for you hundreds of times with your

lips as you left the universe,

went around a lengthy satiny,

black arc, and came in at the back still

saying I delight in it was years later

you woke half beneath the stove, the skillet and its

handle above you like a day Big Dipper,

the jagged stateroom of the earth slowed

you understood it was a shut translation,

I love you, it is our anchor, the words

made of wind, water, starlight poured

mouth to chaps

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Nov/Dec 1998

Provided by dint of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved