Being a Constellation and Other Poems

    by Annie Finch

    BEING A CONSTELLATION

    Heavy with my milk, you move
    your compact body, though I hold
    you dense under a constellation
    whose sparse lights ache over you.

    If, looking up, you recognize
    the shadowing of curves that casts
    towards my belly, and the way
    my nipples travel, like two stars

    You are a question, small and dense,
    and I am an answer, long diffuse
    and dark, but I want to be sky
    for you so, like the stars, I lie,

    holding my far lights wide and flat
    in pictures for your eyes to take,
    spaced easily, so you can catch
    the patterns in your sleepy net.

    From Earth Days: Poems, Chants, and Spells in Five 

    COME

    Will you come like a flame
    To the Goddess’s name?
    Will you call her out loud?
    Will you come?

    Will you come without touching?
    Will you come if you can’t?
    Will you come as you are?
    Will you come?

    Will you come as it calls you,
    Till there’s no way to stop?
    Will you come till you tremble
    Far open, and rock?

    Will you come like a flame
    To the Goddess’s name?
    Will you call her out loud?
    Will you come?

    TWO BODIES

    Two bodies, balanced in mass and power,
    move in a bed through the dark,
    under the earliest human hour.
    A night rocks, like an ark.

    They reach through the ceilings of the night,
    tall as animals.
    Through their valleys bends the light
    of their fertile hills.

    Two bodies breathe their close hellos
    through interlocking pores,
    while that hush of beating slows,
    held, with many oars,

    heart over heart, leg over leg,
    trading still breath, until,
    heart over heart, and seed into egg,
    night holds two bodies still.

    From Earth Days: Poems, Chants, and Spells in Five Directions 

    Author’s Bio:

    Annie Finch is an American poet, writer, translator, speaker, teacher, and performer. She is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Earth Days: Poems, Chants, & Spells in Five Directions (Nirala Publications), Eve and Calendars (both finalists for the National Poetry Series), and Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams (awarded the Sarasvati Award). Her other works include essays, books, and anthologies on poetics, feminism, and spirituality. including A Poet’s Craft, The Body of Poetry, and Choice Words: Writers on Aboriton. Educated at Yale and Stanford University, where she earned her Ph.D, she has lectured and traveled widely from her home in New York City to teach and perform.

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