You the thick hair of a larch from the archipelago,
skin made by centuries of time,
veins that have known seas of forest timber,
green blood dropped from the sky into memory.
No one will retrieve my lost heart
from all those roots, from the fresh-bitter glare
of the sun multiplied on the water.
That’s where it lives, the shadow that does not follow me.
And that’s why you rose from the South like an island
crowded and crowned with feathers and timber:
I smelled the scent of those drifting forests,
I found the dark honey I’d known in the woods;
on your hips I touched those opaque petals
that were born with me, that made up my soul.