You can stand here too
on the slow movement of this shadow
or on one of the lines between love and fear
and watch her with me—how stiffly she walks,
tipping the dots and lines on her back,
and the leathery dark that
you see briefly on the sides of things
when it makes the dawn feel heavy
and then vanishes quietly into the day
and all of the days.
She steps on the curves of her claws
and drags the oval of her passing
and the long of her tail on the clay.
Her thumb-short shrieks are high
and odd and seem to bend
a moment of what-is-not
into the smaller space of what-is.
Her eddy is on the heat of our skin,
a black moon going coldly
slowly uphill, not quite touching
the hanging, unlit stars.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 28, Issue 3.
Patricia Nelson is a retired attorney who worked for many years with the group of poets brought together by Lawrence Hart and then by Lawrence’s son, John Hart. Her most recent book, Monster Monologues, was published by Fernwood Press.
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