Beams

In the afternoon sun 
that smelled of contradiction
quick birds announcing spring's intention 
and autumn about to begin
I started to tell you
what Eudora never told me
how quickly it goes
the other fork out of mind's eye 
choice
becoming a stone wall
across possible 
beams
outlined on the shapes of winter 
the sunset colors of Southampton Beach 
red-snapper runs at Salina Cruz 
and we slept in the fishermen's nets 
a pendulum swing
between the rippling fingers
of a belly dancer with brass rings 
and a two-year-old's sleep smell 
the inexorable dwindling 
no body's choice
and for a few short summers 
I too was delightful.

Whenever spring comes I wish to burn 
to ride the flood like a zebra goaded 
shaken with sun
to braid the hair of a girl long dead 
or is it my daughter grown
and desire for what is gone
sealed into hunger  like an abandoned mine 
nights when fear came down like a jones 
and I lay  rigid with denials
the clarity of frost without 
the pain of coldness
autumn's sharp precisions and yet 
for the green to stay.

Dark women clad in flat and functional leather 
finger their breastsummers  whispering
sisterly advice one dreams of fish
lays her lips like spring across my chest 
where I am scarred and naked
as a strip-mined hill in West Virginia 
and hanging on my office wall
a snapshot of the last Dahomean Amazons 
taken the year that I was born
three old Black women in draped cloths 
holding hands.

A knout of revelation   a corm of song 
and love   a net of possible
surrounding all acts of life
one woman harvesting   all I have ever been 
lights up my sky like stars
or flecks of paint   storm-flung
the blast and seep of gone
remains
only the peace we make with it
shifts into seasons
lengthening past equinox
sun  wind  come round again 
seizing us in her arms like a warrior lover 
or blowing us into shapes
we have avoided for years
as we turn
we forget what is not possible.