An Account of Kissing

[ An Account of Kissing ]

I stood on the shore facing her pale,
And senselessly, she turned from me,
Was turned from me, and turned to salt;

And yet it happened in the imagination
Where we stood together, where I dissolved
Into a cloud. I held the finger, hers,

To touch the sky. Pointing until light enough.
We spoke in a language of no tongue
On earth. The shore, ours, is not a story.

I breathed terra and driftwood
And with horrible flagellum
I scourged my bare legs on ox-hide.

"Et nos ergo manum ferulae subduximus"
"The calm globe of Morning is upon us"
"Your limbs are twisted olive branches"

I listened, years before I knew you,
To the inamoratam, and yet it happened
In the nettles, it happened till I reddened

All the more. And I believed you.
And I stood on the shore facing you,
Hours upon hours, until the flowers,

Wild as wohnt, wilted into rainwhisps,
Pouring words upon us like pearls
And the grateful sky's attribution

Knows God's wrath. I know about mourning.
In the end flush everything red parted;
We spent passing a night over a humid bed

Between two lips called Small Pleasure.

You woke me at dawn, holding my living face,
Where I still live. And yet it happens
In the imagination, as many others
Behind us had drowned.
* * * * *

* poem quotes or paraphrases, in part, from Joshua Cohen's prose, "An Account of the Saltscape, in Three Parts."