May Rising

For Sadie

she has happened to me, here

at this liminal split and tear,

this, Persephone, cast pools of oat and salt in her palms.

where before a sulphurous haze, now

her autumn palette spills and how

it quivers, the animate unexpected.

see how ambivalence balks at her motions

the float of her words across cochlear oceans

rupture this net that chokes me, gently.

by the waxing wednesday dusk,

she peels from me this threadbone husk

and pools our shadows to drain through spring.

were my knuckles raw enough

to scrape her features from the bluff

i might believe myself the artist and she the motion of my brush

but one away from the very last

what’s left of me bound to the mast

of this the coral graveyard once a sinking ship

desolate, the sweep, these ribbons of ash

streaks burning in submarine streams, the flash

of impulse imploding my will to surrender

to her, in the shallows, stirring the silt

the cracks in her cadence, her bruised southern lilt

a siren’s aching pull to warmer waters

it is i who am still bathed in dust

counting pennies black and chips of rust

cowering before her, behind dirty fingers

afraid that the venom about me still lingers.