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The Hunter and the Sylph
We stand in the forest.
The boy will go away soon.
My dark needles fall
on his clothes, his hair.
He leans on his rifle,
dreaming of women.
I shed my cones.
He bends, smells one
and walks home with it.
He has taken what I give:
he must live
in my shadow of branches.
Fishing Soul's Bottom
I listen to
your body’s speech.
Its slow and complex
ramblings
say more than
love can speak.
Now we trawl
soft silt of poems,
reel selves outward,
gut soft contents.
Skeleton fish
buried in sand drifts
poke bones up
in reflection.
Sift inner pools
to find lost essence.
Reshape landscapes
of soul’s bottom.
Gulls in Mirrors
I fish inner seas
my childhood made,
head under water,
rump tipped up.
You yank my tail.
Plucking me
from Trinidad,
you towel me off,
rubbing my breasts
until feathers erupt.
Moans rise
like squalling gulls.
Vowels foam with soul.
Tides of your eyes
wash starfish up.
But dawn opens
underwings. I try
them on and see myself.
Gulls circle mirrors
in bathrooms I turn in.
Love dons plumage,
wades jetties,
flies to distant piers,
molting soft breast down
in shoals where you wade.
Goodbye fills your fist
with its gray tail
of feathers, flushing
from boundaries where
seas end in waves.
Deborah Finch
Current Poetry Jan-March 2001:
2River View
www.daemen.edu/pages/rlong/tworiver/2RView/5_3/
3rd Muse Poetry Journal
http://www.3rdmuse.com/journal/issue6/index.html
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside
http://www.rt66.com/~sfpoetry/finch.html
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