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King

Dawn is like a child again.

Dawn spreads her eyes wide and looks.

Liquid fields cascade before her down to seashore

And every bit of green glows orange to the edges

As women beat their washing white

And newborn shadows shoulder cold against the rocks.

Lizards.

This red spills over the granite horizon--

this red as new as never before--

And some other time

She will fold the hillsides into cloudy baskets

And take them with her to where the sky is born

And bring them back before the fog clears

So no one will ever know.

She hold her hands up to her breasts and wonders

That this keeps happening--

That she collects bundles of sky and seagrass

and the smell of sand

And of sweat caught between the knuckles,held to the nose,

And is left each morning with only this divine milk,

a morning sickness of heavenly rage

That she dare not think about

Because she knows the world will grow up soon and go astray

And yet she feeds it.

"Suckle me, and drain me dry of motherhood,

So that other gods can guide your fate."

If the world were made this way then each day

she is dreaming, or she must wish at times that she was, that she

could wake up and forget, and not fear to love again.

And so is the faint-headed queen that she thinks that maybe she is, she is

lost in dream, and distantly remembered desire,

Young and recently with child,

Tripping slightly on the granite pavement stones,

as she takes a parapet view of the world that has betrayed her

And will surely betray her again.

If she were to confide in you,

if you were to earn her momentary trust, she would say:

Each morning, she felt her breasts to burst,

with the divinity entering within.

Preponderance of sweet motherlove,

blent with wine ambrosial.

To suckle her child--

One who, king to be, must take suck from such

stark pendulous flesh,

formed mortal-divine

does gain his voice and manly vigor,

by wind in union with unclothed skin

in the chill of the blue-veined morning air.

Pale woman--

The vessels upon the sea

did sway

as the child was cupped in the crest of her arm--

hung like a spider's quarry,

in a web so fine as to be invisible,

in which she moved;

dancing in spindleshafts of woven light.