The Drifting! (A Recent Song)

Oh, the drifting! How that water swayed!

Those bubbles like rubber bands breaking!
You drifted with your mouth,
and I with my room, my windows, my curtains,
my days of black rain, my prolonged silence
among butterflies and imagination and panic.
In other words we popped our bubbles
but we kept blowing!
We kept blowing!

That is, you embodied woman and child,

Drifting somewhere between them.

That is we were the drifting.

And that time that the sun with the stars

from the same dark dome hung, I ask you now,

Throwing to the wind this

bottle broken and blessed,

which one of your souls wetted

the lips of our first kiss?

At times you were mouth and others frail bone,

And I myself was both sparrow and glass—

Tell me now, when we clashed and broke,

Which one of us shattered, which one of us

Was the stone?

You took me there, Golden Lady mine,

You said we had miles to travel;

Notwithstanding the chasing ravens,

Or the dead lovers paving the road,

Just bring me, you said, your rice and beans

We’ll have a sad picnic with the dead,

And for the living we’ll break the bread.