Of Darkness and Light by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602233751
Publisher: University of Alaska Press

TWO

THE MOON AFTER ALL

you don’t ask

but there it is

her song

every black night

the bone of solitude

sticks in your throat.

the moon after all

in perfect accompaniment

her lone note

risen from the windpipe of dusk

that hour severed

from morning

from

night.

FISH WIFE

What’s the use

In being jealous of the sea?

She’s a constant flirt; dark

Promise of seduction

Beneath her whitecapped skirt.

IDENTIFYING A HARBOR WITCH

First you must be a woman

who wakes by the sea.

All men speak of you,

they say your heart’s

in hibernation. In winter

you soak your skin in sea,

sleep at harbor’s edge,

become a piece of wood

so petrified they can’t

see your growth. They hope

you have no feeling left.

When they sail away, weave

seaweed through your hair.

Make braids of jealousy. Crush

bull kelp with your heel, when

held by men in sun

its bulb promises warm light.

This will begin with a man

who gives you eight stones

from a shore called Desire

where the sun is always rising.

Each one has steeped so long

in water dyed by dawn,

that they are streaked with sunrise;

especially when emerging

from the moist clasp of a wave.

He will give them to you the first

morning you make love; one

for each day you spent

together. He will leave

them tracking across your white

sheets like the print of a wild animal

on a thin skin of snow.

When it is understood

that he is never coming back,

you will swim to a frigid

coast you know and become this

woman who wakes by the sea. He

will fear you behind him,

rattling eight dawns in a bag,

cursing his name with the hiss

of each day you sink in the sea.

You will be a woman charmed

By the fire of his stones.

for Virginia Woolf

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