The Rising

Denise Clark
I

f only I could give the words
you search for in my face,
ones you need when we are finally still,
could explain how my body rises at touch,
defying gravity, frothy cream in a pail,
mist caressing water as twilight quickens.

Silence is the only tongue I mouth
into your ear, hovering, skimming
the surface, escaping the corporeal,
dancing between flesh and spirit.
Still I lose you—your release so tangible,
fraught with proof, weighed down by matter.

This silence, my gift.
Lash yourself to another mast,
one embedded to a core: To know the song of the rising,
you'd cut out your own spiteful tongue,
suffocate your wife—forever drift between
earth and my open arms.

*

[From Felonious Desires, a work in progress]

 

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