WATER BRIDE (Dec. 24, 2002)

The water bride returned
in the silted waters
of night: She was weary

of wearing this or that
woman's face, so she
came blind as the sea.

I was once desperate
to claim her for life
& so kept losing her

in comic motions,
shaping my body for her,
shouting into waves.

None of it worked: She
lapsed on back into surf,
leaving this bald shore,

even her smile erased
in the boneless wash.
But not lost. She curves

every line down this page,
across and down down
down, nothing I'll kiss

again but deeper, a wave
washed through, forever
afoot in wastes of this heart.

I have been pickled in
her brine: I am that dawn
where she'll always shine,

that scree of white
slippers dancing where
I pull my every breath.

It's 5:30 a.m. on Christmas
Eve, the windows open
to a restlessness which

later will pour rain
then turn cold. I am that year
at birth once again:

son and lover of a
uteral gulf which streams
through the day

like the sheets of her
gauze bower, cell and
boudoir, well and tower,

ring to middle finger,
trothed to the wave's
forever breaking smile.