Bone me. Unfeather my fears.
I was a mountain before you
and I let everyone climb,
my springs sprang high,
sluiced down into your dry fields.

2.
Was that me singing? No,
it was you in all your windows
glad of my rain. I admit
you learned the song from me
but you sang better:

There was
a woman walking
on the road
in wet clothes
though the rain
stopped long ago,
long ago, some
water lasts forever.

You must have liked the song
you sang so well.

3.
Remember the Pyrenees
when we first began,
pink chalk dust all over your hands
and three flat stones
to hold the kettle over
the meanest fire charcoal ever set
and yet we drank that tea
lime leaves and honey
and an eagle feather fallen in the pot.

4.
I shaped you,
I hope you know that—
grow a little more this way,
a little less that.
I was the Donatello of your dreams
and when you woke
we both were complete.

5.
When I get around to it
tell me the truth,
how long we lingered
in such crowded markets
until there were
just two of us left, and I
bossy as usual called
one of them you and one of them me.

The crowd was gone,
the stalls were empty,
windows all shattered in the storm.
We’re used to ruins
(we live in them, remnants
of an earlier reality,
we still stumble on their bricks)
used to ruins so in the collapse
of this economy felt right at home.
That was before you decided
to become a mountain too.

6.
Who was that wet woman?
I can hear your curiosity.
She was your missing sister Sarah,
the one who believes in religion,
no day without its baptism,
I tried to stop her for a chat,
a sweet tisane, a Turkish cigarette
but no, she was late for vespers
or a seder or some such thing,
left me with a little pamphlet,
its pages all stuck together from the wet,
something about triangles, gods, hearts.

7.
Now I’ve lost track
of all the times I’ve told
and you believed
enough to make it true.

And you told back to me
a reasonable commonwealth
not too close but still
this side of the moon.
Every day turns out to be Election Day—
and why not? All we ever have to do
is choose. I still have
that eagle feather, dry and stiff,
stuck between the pages,
an excellent bookmark it makes
but I’m not sure which book.

26 March 2021