About a Girl
The problem is her lips.
They don't form smiles any more than waves decide of their own accord
to lift themselves up off of the ocean's surface.
And if lips are meant to be drowsy shutters
then hers fail miserably; crinkling apologetically
and they let everything, everything through!
The problem is her skin.
So pale, translucent; so tender: it scarcely seems up to the task
of keeping her separate from the rest of the world.
The skin of a silver birch in winter’s pale moonlight-
and it lets everything, everything through!
Waves, I know, are a dance of love
made as the ocean coils and compacts:
the unknowable fullness of its billowing depths
backing tightly against the deep-packed sand
and backing tightly against the rock-ribbed earth
miles below
and then, exploding outwards-
self throwing self across space.
O, please - take caution in this place!
Don't mistake that which is invisible
for being tiny, or cramped or crabbed into corners
for it is immense and all around you.
Don't name it, and in naming it relegate it
to forgotten dusty corridors in your mind.
It lives in dimensions you cannot see.
It hurts to take it all in -- I know
gut-sore, deep within, and I can barely stand it.
The great humped yearning force of the ocean
is a problem
as it flows past me, cloaked like a solar wind.
See! It stretches to reach, and finally, to touch
the face of that gloaming, thirsty moon.
Never doubt that it does.
People, I know, are odd constructs of stardust-
each one of us, nothing
but beautiful particles
fired in long-ago galaxies
hurled out from innumerable dying stars.
Countless spidery green lines written out
on the vaulted void parchment of the universe
arcing achingly across time and space
to join, unexpectedly: this is here. this is now.
O, the equation of me! the equation of you!
Everything, everything flows past me!
and her lips let it through
and her skin lets it through
and I may buckle and fall to my knees.
She shines, and I think:
she must have a history
far greater than she knows.
Remnants of an ancient once-proud star
and tiny re-crossed travelers have been reunited in her against all odds
joyfully resuming their half-remembered nuclear handshake
that once powered an entire solar system.
They are busting out streams of limpid photons the color of egg yolks
and they flow from her like a rampaging waterfall in the Spring:
past her lips
and through her skin
and out through her hopeful eyes
until, at last, all that is left races, laughingly,
through the raveled lengths of her brimming, brimming, golden hair.
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