Spells. Annie Finch

with the edge of winter sky,

       leaning over us in icy stars

       through this night-shot

      night-shot dark

      is never easy.

      Flowers fade here.

      Voices pull me on through the cavern

      from the new season. Her voice old, silent—

       our hands, our breasts, our curves

       curl through our hands and ravel—

      On damp limestone, a violet curling—

       my lover, when you riddle with me

      the hard, the intricate dark.

      Rack me with courage, spring,

      come kill me, flowers;

      if we are shadows, come;

      make me our shadows

      as I reach for flowers.

      OVER DARK ARCHES

      Naked and thin and wet, as if with rain,

      bursting I come out of somewhere, bursting again.

      And like a great building that breathes under sunlight

      over dark arches, your body is there,

       And my milk moves under your tongue—

      where currents from earth linger under cool stone

      rising to me and my mouth makes a circle

      over your silence

       You reach through your mouth to find me—

      Bursting out of your body that held me for years,

      as the rain wets the earth with its bodies—

       And my thoughts are milk to feed you

      till we turn and are empty,

      till we turn and are full.

      A CAROL FOR CAROLYN

       It is easy to be a poet,

       brim with transparent water.

       —Carolyn Kizer, “In the First Stanza”

      I dreamed of a poet who gave me a whale

      that shadowed clear pools through the kelp-making shade.

      When beached sea-foam dried on the rocks, it would sail

      down currents that gathered to pool and cascade

      with turbulent order.

      She brims with transparent water,

      as mother and poet and daughter.

      The surface is broken and arching and full,

      impelled by the passions of nation and woman.

      The waves build and fall; the deep currents pull

      toward rocky pools cupping the salt of the human.

      The ocean she’s authored

      brims, with transparent water,

      for poet and mother and daughter.

      CHAIN OF WOMEN

      These are the seasons Persephone promised

      as she turned on her heel;

      the ones that darken, till green no longer

      bandages what I feel—

      Now touches of gold stipple the branches,

      promising weeks of time

      to fade through, finding the footprints

      she left as she turned to climb.

      GHAZAL FOR A POETESS

       Many the nights that have passed,

       But I remember

       The river of pearls at Fez

       And Seomar whom I loved.

       —“Laurence” Hope, 1903

      The corners of the frontispiece yellow from their darker edges.

      Aching eyes lift in tremolo from their darker edges.

      Moon lit your blood in the jasmine-blooming gardens;

      bodies still glide in tableau from their darker edges.

      Your “hungry soul” laps at the page with its “burning, burning”;

      your moans send out an echo from their darker edges.

      Silk covers your arms, your fingers, your lips, your voice.

      Your black lines weave a trousseau from their darker edges.

      Wind strikes at the palm trees where you walked;

      fronds shake like tousled arrows from their darker edges.

      Your nights spread quiet over “parched and dreary” sand.

      Finches fill them till they glow from their darker edges.

      MEETING MAMMOTH CAVE, EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT

      In the night to my humanness

      the unparticled has poured,

      no beam will sink or angle,

      no slow new mineral drip

      through the circling ceiling

      (loud strength of a darkness

      only dark can reassure

      (solid cavern’s holding,

      to hollow the beautiful

      carrying dark to hold me,

      to empty the slippery

      (The loud strength of a darkness

      only dark can reassure

      (solid cavern’s holding,

      No beam will sink or angle,

      open cavern’s holding,

      in the rock to my humanness

      unparticled and poured

      to hollow the beautiful

      (Into no circumference.

      BUTTERFLY LULLABY

      My wild indigo dusky wing

      my mottled, broad-wing skipper,

      a sleepy, dreamy dusty wing,

      flying through my night.

      My northern, southern, cloudy wing,

      my spring azure, my crescent pearl,

      a silver-spotted, sweet question mark,

      sleeping in my sky.

      A tiger swallowtail, harvester,

      moving through my hours,

      an eyed brown in the redwing dark,

      wrapped softly in my words.

      INTIMATIONS OF PREGNANCY

      I