You could rock to sleep
against my mitral valve
in and out with the freshened blood
and your cheek against
the smooth meniscus of my
left atrium
or tangle among the strings I keep
in the ventricle.
Hammocky heart that swings
pendulum to my moods and desires
all muscle and strong enough
for two, or more if they need the refuge
and can take their places
right atrium, tricuspid valve,
bedding down against the ventricular septum.
With the seashell wash wave there
swimming bones
all the small ones with names like carpals, sesamoid, phalanges
can at last intertwine and rest there mistaken for fish spine
among the debris of the ocean’s sigh.
I remember you with that strange spongey swimming cap
in white flotsam feet up longing out your body to the sea’s
in and out green and glassy
clean like eyes and wild like hair.
When they come to pick over my life like gulls
(scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, pisiform)
can they see in every reflected surface
how we would laugh together and pass it from wave to wave
until we surfed them home?
From here you can feel the cold breast of the sky
if nursing here the runnels of rain
have been sucked dry and any warm frames of light
succulent like honey barred beams
dried into powder themselves;
a day bees hate, with grey dissatisfaction
they fluff their buzzing bodies and frown down the wind.
But you, having nursed and found the fire’s warmth
in your bones you have no word for afraid
or refrain no other state than barefoot
even in the mud that licks you as you would lick the rain
and stick wet coldness
will fall off you
like air.
And here, rising parapet
to the timeliness of this grotto song
a fault line fine as a mohair thread
twigged and pulled taut as fish-on-the-line
and teaching these caresses one after the other
the tug the violent thrashes – tail in the air –
and armed like this, hear the heat that rises
magma in the centre all around
melting points, lines in general, fizzed to smoke
leaving just breath on the ferns and diamonds.
Fish jaws pull out of their sockets
long bones, the cartilage spring loaded
to reveal tongue and throat and dark unknowns
of insides, as if interiors were the only motivation
putting in, taking out
life force, all that longing hunger all that
sprinkle of desire
all those cold cold hours before the fire warmed in fully
and took the fish from the sea and
swam them into thigh muscles
involuntary seizure, pain, release
the quiver of ferns and diamonds.
The gods took on promise of everything hard
so nothing would penetrate skin
to keepsafe
from this unpicking, this wayward puncture
but only small mistletoe stemmed outwards from the grotto
and fleshwounded him
so the sky had its
fill of diamonds.
poemation 