I don't know when it was,
the first time it touched me...
Was it in those sea voices,
astir in silent pools,
or in the fringed throats of anemones
when I was a barefoot child?
Or was it the first time
I discovered the power of women
over young boys?
I remember it in a desert sky,
that was white as milk with stars,
pouring through a silence
that made my heart pound
a loud, mystical beat in my head,
and there again with the great sharks
I saw swimming where I often swam.
It was there, without a face or hands,
beckoning me, a child dumb with grief
from being born into a miraculous,
cruel world — cast blind upon concrete,
sliding into the music of foam —
urging me to desire nothing,
to know nothing,
be nothing,
have nothing,
that might allure me away
from the voice:
this hidden fire in my belly,
this mind-breeze,
this seizure,
this fate of lushness
streaming through nothing,
this monstrous curse
of blessing.

I'm going back now
to the startling wind in a bush,
to birds in straw tents,
to the gray squirrel's tail,
to a severe blade of grass,
to a woman's milky thighs,
to soft rivers of the moon,
to a gold splash of sun,
to enter that
which enters me.