Alison Stine
We know our way by stars or smell,
every collar of the gray road, every shape
between the light switch and your cornered bed,
iced in dark. Such is the course
our bodies found, settling the hollow
of neck and breast. You whispered,
You were born for this, and I taught you
the adaptive skills, to watch for the eye spark
of deer or dog along the drive.
On the outskirts, we are linked by power,
slick cords doubling the horizon.
A good marker, the sky--constant but for
the flash of birds, and they have chosen
to leave us. Or did we drive them away?
Moon Lake Electric pays thousands
for the raptors found dead
beneath their humming poles.
Blackened bodies, or sometimes, no bodies--
tufts, plate bones, talons tight
as if in the sexual helix.
Fourteen golden eagles in one day
and they don't know what to do with them
as I don¹t know what to do with you.
Your moods carry me as the wind lifts
feathers from the matted earth.
You can harden me with the spiral of your skin.
You can open me with your mouth's arrow.
Once I drove to you in a storm so thick
everything around me fell away.
Across the bridge I tracked the light of trucks.
Then nothing. There's a clearing
where the poles make angles out of air,
griding the light between road
and more road. If you go, look
for the boundary, the curl in the stratus layers--
my body, tight as if you never touched me,
cochlear, clutching the wire. You think
I don't know that I am the one?
All the world does is give me signs.
