Outlines

    I
What hue lies in the slit of a anger 
ample and pure as night
what color the channel 
blood comes through?

A Black woman and a white woman 
charter our courses close
in a sea of calculated distance
warned away by reefs of hidden anger 
histories rallied against us
the friendly face of cheap alliance.

Jonquils through the Mississippi snow 
you entered my vision
with the force of hurled rock
defended by distance and a warning smile 
fossil tears pitched over the heart's wall 
for protection
no other women
grown beyond safety
come back to tell us 
whispering
past the turned shoulders 
of our closest
we were not the first
Black woman white woman 
altering course to fit our own journey.

In this treacherous sea 
even the act of turning 
is almost fatally difficult 
coming around full face 
into a driving storm 
putting an end to running 
before the wind.

On a helix of white
the letting of blood
the face of my love 
and rage
coiled in my brown arms 
an ache in the bone 
we cannot alter history 
by ignoring it
nor the contradictions
who we are.

    II
A Black woman and a white woman 
in the open fact of our loving 
with not only our enemies' hands
raised against us
means a gradual sacrifice 
of all that is simple 
dreams
where you walk the mountain
still as a water-spirit
your arms lined with scalpels 
and I hide the strength of my hungers 
like a throwing knife in my hair.

Guilt wove through quarrels like barbed wire 
fights in the half forgotten schoolyard 
gob of spit in a childhood street
yet both our mothers once scrubbed kitchens 
in houses where comfortable women 
died a separate silence
our mothers' nightmares
trapped into familiar hatred
the convenience of others drilled into their lives 
like studding into a wall
they taught us to understand
only the strangeness of men.

To give   but not beyond what is wanted 
to speak   as well as to bear
the weight of hearing 
Fragments of the word wrong 
clung to my lashes like ice
confusing my vision with a crazed brilliance 
your face   distorted into grids
of magnified complaint
our first winter
we made a home outside of symbol 
learned to drain the expansion tank together 
to look beyond the agreed-upon disguises 
not to cry each other's tears.

How many Februarys
shall I lime this acid soil
inch by inch
reclaimed through our gathered waste? 
from the wild onion shoots of April 
to mulch in the August sun
squash blossoms   a cement driveway 
kale and tomatoes
muscles etch the difference
between I need and forever.

When we first met 
I had never been
for a walk in the woods

    III
light catches two women on a trail 
together   embattled by choice
carving an agenda with tempered lightning 
and no certainties
we mark tomorrow
examining every cell of the past 
for what is useful   stoked by furies 
we were supposed to absorb by forty 
still we grow   more precise with each usage

like falling stars or torches
we print code names upon the scars 
over each other's resolutions
our weaknesses   no longer hateful.

When women make love 
beyond the first exploration 
we meet each other   knowing 
in a landscape
the rest of our lives
attempts to understand.

    IV
Leaf-dappled the windows lighten
after a battle that leaves our night in tatters 
and we two glad to be alive   and tender 
the outline of your ear pressed on my shoulder 
keeps a broken dish from becoming always.

We rise to dogshit   dumped on our front porch 
the brass windchimes from Sundance stolen 
despair offerings of the 8 A.M. News
reminding us we are still at war
and not with each other
"give us 22 minutes and we will give you the world..." 
and still we dare
to say we are committed
sometimes without relish.

Ten blocks down the street 
a cross is burning
we are a Black woman and a white woman
with two Black children
you talk with our next-door neighbors 
I register for a shotgun
we secure the tender perennials
against an early frost
reconstructing a future we fuel
from our living   different precisions
In the next room a canvas chair 
whispers beneath your weight
a breath of you between laundered towels 
the flinty places that do not give.

    V
Your face upon my shoulder
a crescent of freckle over bone
what we share   illuminates what we do not 
the rest is a burden of history
we challenge
bearing each bitter piece to the light
we hone ourselves upon each other's courage
loving
as we cross the mined bridge   fury 
tuned like a Geiger counter

to the softest place.
One straight light hair on the washbasin's rim
difference
intimate as a borrowed scarf
the children arrogant as mirrors 
our pillows' mingled scent 
this grain of our particular days 
keeps a fine sharp edge
to which I cling like a banner 
in a choice of winds
seeking an emotional language 
in which to abbreviate time.

I trace the curve of your jaw 
with a lover's finger 
knowing the hardest battle 
is only the first
how to do what we need for our living 
with honor and in love
we have chosen each other
and the edge of each other's battles 
the war is the same
if we lose
someday women's blood will congeal 
upon a dead planet 
if we win
there is no telling.