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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