Thaw

Now something has purged
this plethora of images,
their attending coil of tension;
both.
Distraction channels into inspiration,
so confluences
irrigate without damage
in their carving out of landscapes
within a body.
The lines
are not regular:
tributaries run into salt water
in capillarial diffusion
from the great throbbing melt
of an ice-core.
 Narcissistic lust,
for a blind animus that does not yet know;
for a body briefly touched.
This neutral friction of alone,
the familiar whorls of my fingertips have,
recorded in their groove,
all the songs of love
my body has ever sung.
These silent songs
run through me as blood
and fires are flaring violently
in some part of a dream.
All is running into the abstract
right now,
and never will return:
It rains and I feel it on my back
though I am inside
and under layers of winter wool.
The rawness of life,
muted by years,
is sliding itself
along the senses
with a cold,soft, wet, touch;
with a vast innocence.
Stretched
like my
belly
after three
children
from the origin of all my pain,
the edge of it,
the dangerous edge I feel
to precipice myself upon,
is deceptive as a razor
unblooded.

When we pull at our flesh
and each other's
is it the spirit we reach towards?

With my teeth
I pull at something numinous I can only reach
through the skin's elasticity.
In the shock of pleased nerves
and pulsing blood,
it is like the stars are in there
and must be touched
such that they flare
and blink
in utter peace,
so that they swim within
your eternity
and forever is upheld;
a kiss is ...
the sublimation of their aether;
what my lips do to [your] skin
they do to All.

This dry kiss is
silt powder
from the river-bottom,
dredged and flung
by an ancient confluence,
leaves gold-flecked on my cheek...
and the wine glints
in the golden haze's blinding sun
as we stand:
waist deep,
upriver from the dam,
tasting the salt
on the casurina leaves,
and grind ourselves
into the sand.
Toes in dappled rays
play amongst scintillations
of water on treetrunks.