The poet disregards the soup

she reencounters it on the hob
at a merry boil
not a slow simmer as instructed…

That year I hunted Emily Dickinson. Stood at her grave as the snowbank split me open. Further from love than I’d ever been.

You seemed to be born blind.
At first in cracked pot, in frosted compost
Your leaves pined – jaded limp swords

If only my tongue were context then my teeth would be meaning and when I opened my mouth
to eat I would find a story there each time.

That particular, chemical clarity,
sun into blue, ripples on the ceiling.

Rare days when water rests
between the ropes, unbroken . . .

I suppose
this beautiful bright dawn
is the sky trying to offset
the wild gusts of last night
like a rescue mission…

. . . Yes, I’ve tasted pomegranates
and I know what they do. The sense of vertigo:
happily dizzy at first, as if you’ve downed
a bottle of Shiraz or Merlot. You live by night . . .

I knew the earth rolling by
was red, smelt its tang on the wind,
felt woods weighing green

My sister’s father wound is the flush cut
on the bark where she lost her foothold
and fell,
the trunk burning red between her thighs
all the way down the tree to the ground…