Poem to My Animal Self

Rain. Sun. Pollen rising to a haze

over water and air-another

summer gone, and did a single one

of those sultry evenings stick?

How might I keep just one

of the nights when dancing

pared me to flame?

Someday I'll be seated alone

with just a few notes floating in my head,

unable to rise unassisted,

and here I go again, letting

the future, like fallen berries,

stick to the soles of my shoes.

The poems I've been reading by a woman

who gave all of herself again and again

to love, who let herself fill and empty

like a heart- what came after?

Grief may have paralyzed her for months

yet a fine abandon carries the poems-

a thread, golden, not to be broken.

It wove a net around her body. She sank

into the mesh of it, ripening

and bruising. Now she is alone. Her poems

are alive with lovers. And I can see

in her picture, though her face

has thickened, that she will

always remember being beautiful.