Intervention, Divine and Otherwise

i.
Drunk, you sway like a sea anemone,
fixed, expansive, foreign,
bright secrets swimming in the folds of your skirt.
Your eyes pool the tide's indecision,
its infinite shades between wet and dry,
as though perfection were possible at each level.
The secret of whale song is locked in your mouth;
the seabed might rock if you wept,
barnacled hulls would surely shift.
Even the first cells that slowly gathered to creep onto land
might change their mind, if you changed yours.

ii.
Your letters never give the colors of the walls,
or the texture of the dining hall trays.
I want you to help me feel the wool blanket at the foot of your bed,
the rust on the wrought-iron bars.
I want to be invited to guard your rest,
as shadows stretch across the tiles between two and four each afternoon.
Instead you write lists of what you have lost,
and what has been taken from you:
your belt and hair dryer, the bone arrowhead you found in Montana
that summer, and have kept in you wallet since.
All against the rules. Everything you held, against the rules.

iii.
But you. You return to water your own plants, to feed your dead mother's three cats, to pick peppermint from the patch beside the bungalow. Your first morning, when the dog-day cicadas' shrill call reaches us through open windows and thrift-store curtains, when the crazed chorus reaches us through you, you just say, "The cicadas are back," and smile our return into sunlit sleep.

Copyright 2007 Danielle Lapidoth
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Barnwood magazine
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