Sulis (2003)

Ah, but she is deeper
and older than mere
bronze, she was
forged in water’s fire,
that wash that burnishes
a brilliant shore.
She and I mated
long ago in some
different life, she
the priestess of the
spring, I some
horse-man up from
Gaul, my love of
plunder the fire
she took up and under
when she bid me
rise and go go go.
The spring at Bath
is hot as orgasm,
spreading from a
crack in the the
stony pelvis of
she-Titans fallen
long ago. For
ten thousand years
men have washed their
limbs in her warm
flow, marvelling that
the sun in depths
could heal the body so.
On the main temple
pediment there
is a stone face of
a male Medusa, his
beard-locks like waves,
snakes in his hair,
wings sprouting from
the ears, the eyes wide
in that stare which
knows too much about
what’s further down.
Mothers in labor
and lovers in love’s
rigor have that same
fixed, like the face
of a beheaded with
a full-eyed look of
surprise and terror
and full knowledge
at last: He wards
the door into
this temple bath,
both angel of her
arousing and devil
of descending stair.
I suspect that my
friend Oran had that
look when Columba
unearthed him from
3 days in the grave.
Those eyes popped
open in full wonder
of the sights he’d
taken in swimming
to Manannan’s isle,
in search of sea gods
and you. So much
to see in three
nights -- though I
suspect three thousand
lives were backed
into his boat. His
eyes were too full of
all those souls he
encountered whom
we can no longer know,
not from any bourne
we travel. Something
else though in his
eyes -- a look which
contradicted everything
Columba was constructing
up from Oran’s grave --
Like the blare of
approaching headlights
in thick morning mist,
or an sailor’s thousand-
league stare. That’s
the terror we impose
upon the eyes that
see all we can’t -- a
pregnant coming
rictus transfixed
with her hot startle,
her bluest swoon.
Read the faces of
drown sailors who
man their broken
decks: All are groom
of her salt visage,
their bloating eyes
full hers at last,
fat embers of blue
fire I cannot shake
or write my way
past. My morbid
thrall is of his
who wards the door,
of fin and fang
composed, between
sea and sun where
she really waits
and washes and
and grows goggle
eyed giving birth to this.