An anniversary gift for DM
So, there are two possible ways this could go—
I could give you bronze or I could give you pottery.
Bronze is the obvious, the shade
of the southern hemisphere, a look
already showing on the back of your neck,
your wood-splitting arms, and my hands find,
at the hairline of your face, two zones—
the fresh bronze and the white of the snows
you’ve come from.
You’ve been touched by loving
the sun of it here, and the bronze flush
on the eucalypts in spring. Bronze is the stuff
of bells and mirrors, and the bush is
thronging with it, and today the river gives back
the shape of the hills, dabbling in pleasure.
The other way is mud.
Dust and water, really.
Adam is made of it. First,
a body. Before any decorating, the work
of kneading, of shaping.
You couldn’t make this up.
What body we have made.
Before the din of bells. Before
we even saw what we were doing.
A body being built. Out of yours,
out of mine, a third one that functions
like an ark. The thing that matters
happens in the dark.
A body made of pottery
I easily misread
as poetry.
There’s an error! And what an alloy
we make, my love!
turning into bodies
of mud, mingled with light—
and out of our mouths, songs,
bronzing in the rising
falling sun.