Timepiece

In other destinies of choice
you could have come redheaded
with a star between your thighs
and morning like tender mushrooms
rising up around your toes
curled like a Shantung woman’s toes
pausing to be loved
in the rice fields at noon
or as sharpened young eyeteeth
guarded in elegant blackness
erotic and hidden as yam shoots
in the parted mouth of dawn
balancing your craft as we went
upstream for water
Elegba’s clay pot whistling upon your head.

But we were new for this time
and used wild-edged pieces of rock
struck off with a blunted hammer
spread
under high sun
and the rocks cry out
while we tell the course
of each other’s tongue
with stones
in the place where the priestess
hurtled out palm-nuts
from enchanted fingers
and the stones mix
the colors of rainbows
flashing
you came like a wheaten song.