2012: Humming Along

“Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.” — Winnie the Pooh

January Morning, Her Quilt

She sleeps

in a row of stitches,

a prick of blood

dried to stain.

I wake

in this flash of magenta throats,

hummingbirds sipping

at the window.

Frost webs the feeder.

She is the quilt, I am

the body warmed.

We were one mind once,

not dust, more a soft oozing,

she and I, you too. Sometimes

the earth is so hot and  liquid

it comes alive. Don’t call it

a beginning, call it muddy palm,

little zephyr, invisible pulse

of light, call it nothing

but more than nothing.

Who knew there’d be wings,

tongues, shimmering skins,

fingers swimming cotton

with a needle? No, don’t call it

anything. She is before words,

under poems, she is this mouth

happy to be a cave of echoes.

Think humming.

Who knew the song

in her throat is the same, listen,

as this cord of feathers

blurred in flight?

I remember aw, then damn it,

the tiny puncture, her blood

wicked loose, spreading open

as a rose into the fabric. It wasn’t

the pain that made her mad,

it was the ruin.