Surged through me, I wanted half
to be the one who lay
with him in the gold grass swaying
the sunburned body
murmured over, she who came down
through the plains with Gilgamesh,
saw him rise slim-hipped from the watering hole
drinking with the gazelles,
wanting the gaze that took him in,
or shaped him, slip of mud under fingers,
afternoon through the fields, old pond
mud, dragonflies on the bank,
half wanting him to be my discovery,
to put him onto the cool page's surface,
to put hands over him, the idea
of him like a cricket hopping
under the hive of clasped fingers,
no, to have him stay
at the watering hole
framed by the tall grasses, gazelles, reaching
into the distance, caught rippling
between the reflection and the drying.











From Poetry Northwest Fall 2006/Winter 2007 Copyright University of Washington. Used with permission.