by Lottie Kent
Today I was sulky and excellent:
after an evening argument
I walked to Elk Glen Lake,
for the third time to see
that fragile green gob of water.
With my limbs spilt over a bench, I let my lower lip jut
like a soft pink shelf
- the filigree veins showing stubborn and sable -
as if it were a bulbous looking glass
for the black buckthorn overhead.
In the Japanese Tea Gardens
the thickening, reddish light
was mottling the slow pond
like carmined spittle from a dying sun
that once burnt gold.
(But now just lights the Dutchman’s Pipe
as the day’s wrinkles deepen.)
It reminded me: I’ve lived a while now,
and my own river-blood has borne
the crimson pulp of revolving leaves,
for years, through mountain mouths
(Semilunar valves)
down under that artery-red Bridge
down into the heart’s sweating valley.
But in that cleavage
where the Redwood leaves have fallen
- waltzed whetted and cold -
onto the water’s shifting skin to quietly
clot
into a soft uvula -
will it not all one day stop?
Life’s a sanguine cadence,
interrupted.
A great poem
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