Autumn

My heart yawns
beneath my ribs.
The harvest
of an untapped wellspring wakes
to soften tender ground
and slake a thirst
that is simple, primal.
 
Wild mare settles
in a grove of trees.
 
It’s raining.
 
You take my hand and I’m amazed
at how natural this is.
Like a bird tucking its head into its feathers:
the warm slide and nestling
of human skin on human skin.
 

Once upon a time
I locked myself into a room
in my body
and refused to drink.
 
I remember how it felt to be like soap
in the arms of lovers
afraid to moor
lest the dock would break.
 
Give me the stormy waves,
I’d say.
 Bind me
to the isolated wilds.
 
This Season of my life is different.
My cells, like mycelium,
have opened their thousands of tiny mouths,
and in the frothy grove, my Spirit,
like this mare,
drinks and stretches,
rolls lavishly about in her wet skin,
as vaporous sighs escape her nostrils.
 
She doesn’t need to chase fire.
She is fire,
and she gathers around the hearth of herself
long enough for the herd to find her.
 
(Or perhaps, like the sailboat,
she has drifted backwards from her striving,
until she has found herself, bobbing and rubbing
against the bellies of the docks
whose loyal mouths await the tongue
of her wind-lashed rope).
 
They greet each other with moist eyes
and rub sensitive whiskers
across each others’ faces,
 
like you and I do,
in the dark nest of your bed,
as just beyond the walls of your house,
junipers guzzle midnight rain,
and a nearby family of coyotes
calls back and forth
over and over
in the thrill of finding each other
still there,
still here.