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"Every angel is terrifying." -- Rainer Maria Rilke
For a long time,
this poem didn't want to be born,
like the childe we formed that night,
who never saw the world,
and was born a strange shower of blood
as if he knew somehow
that the universe would tremble and shatter
if it tried too long to hold something
shaped by that ecstasy,
like holding ice,
that seems so solid at first
and then melts and slips
through your fingers,
like a star exploding
until it collapses of its own weight
and vanishes down to oblivion,
time and space folding in on themselves,
like the moon that night,
one night short of full
that would spill over the next night
filling the sky with silver
but then wane back down into darkness . . .
You were terrifying in your feral beauty,
riding me wild,
calling sap from tree,
water from stone,
shifting shape
into wolf woman
and cougar,
bringing me to throbbing explosion
that I tried to cool and hold
shaping it with strange incantations
as you sat up above me,
all shadows and moonlight
and wetness,
outside the river flowed at the foot of the slope,
reminding us we too were water
and would slip away.
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