He walks through the day to night,

a celestial seismograph under his heart,

buck toothed, taken from the mother by force;

a palm stroke, affiliated.

 

Carp-tongued, summer stilted, starched

with collar book marked chin,

he is not amphibian –

spreading legs, to grow with groans, a form meandering,  sucking air through ripples,

 

he, being taken from the heart too soon.

He is suspended, full of sand;

the driest part of the earth

in the shape of a man. Some say he is a rising heat, looking out over distance.

 

He passes men and women, and children, the same. Each heart  inside - a compass,

the point of infirmity, subtle.

Swift his hold, and fair;

the bargain is not valid, he keeps to time.

 

 

But once, outside Berlin, on some street, circumcised

was a music box.

It wound a woman, old with chords

her skin a tapestry of them all,

 

hung from above silver puckered fingers,

descending, ad nauseam, with the turning dial.

He saw her -

the way her eyelids folded thin, and the pearling planets

 

underneath. He watched the sweet pendulum of her arms,

stroking heaven, warm into the air,

 felt the frayed quilts of her hair, the stain of caramel still there

and in him, the poet stirred.

 

She held no age that could be gone - her lips still bloomed

amongst the paraffin, and he drew breath,

the first of home within his lungs,  not to cull, but to nourish,

and  held her there, and holds her still,

 

waiting for the night to take them both.