Swept

Startling, this body-bump of asterisks finding its way.

My fingers tapping & unclenching.

Finding something beautiful, like a marble or a map of hours.

Sand draining its throat down a glass funnel.

God breathing in my ear, stirring its bronze hairs.

I had found the unlocked fence.

I was carried across the backs of beaded prayers.

Twined hands & patterned feet.

The way you said I might jump.

The way my feet found the toppled redwood.

Its swollen heart & my vibrato face.

The way a river took me in its arms, passed me from stone to stone.

How I tried to love the slick green moss.

The pine wheel that turned & trampled me.

The way you found me there.

You could have been anyone.

The way you took my elbow with your river-hands.

The way you brushed among my naked body.

The way I never said no.

How easily the forest stepped over itself, a twiggy ballerina w/ scabbed knees & halo of fur.

How I lifted my skin from its webs.

The crimped legs of feasting insects. The way

I drew God with shaking fingers, all crooked lines & hemispheres.

How the mild day shone.

How easily I laid myself down among the shaggy river stones.

How they called my name, how they bit my face w/ love.