when the sun rose, I
would have believed it was from the west,
if she told me
the long night
before we slipped into dreamless
sleep, she recited entire poems from
Poe, Pound, and Dickinson, and her own
mythic mantras
I craved her, because
I was flesh, but not once did our lips touch
though her words poured into me like warm wine,
quenching a rapacious thirst
I did not know I possessed
I was the talker, the mountain man
mystic who scattered few coins for free
love, and often cast my seed before
I knew more than a first name
with her, I thought it would be the same
but my paws lay still in my lap, and my ears
became black holes for her white words
what rhyme cast our spell I would never recall
though what stirs yet deepest of all, was the way
I heard she chose to leave this flat plain,
some ancient eve
long after we had our night
she found a fallow field far from the hum of humanity
and made perfect cuts in her thin wrists
while so many others overdosed on life
she spilled hers onto a hungry ground
The title is from phrases I remember from a Richard Powers book.