Sensing Duncan

"do you know this poem by Emily Dickinson?" asked

by a woman who had savored

with her body only a few lines

of the relations that stream from Eden-

"Tve read all 1470!" I answered,

and feel the hand smooth out the sand, erasing

careful finger-drawn lines of play,

who also looked up and asked

"4s it romantic

to arrange stones,"

-when now another

woman has lost the milk in her right breast,

what might I have done to move all that consciousness to

her left, to disturb

the balance of closed valves

"like stone" -

The ego finding itself

at first is weak, nearly

brought down, nearly losing all the creation of

breaking away, guilt

is a fall, but fall as season in the cycle of Mother

drawing into winter, spring, all our pushing-back, our

attempts to free

a line of stone from shored

margins,

she plays in aura

and arranges A, C,

currents

more precise? more wakefully natural

than tide run, roll & failure of sea to sun.