My beloved on the beach in Oregon, with seaweed

1.

I will take your feet first,
your body’s back-handed rememberings,
toes curling in the dust of an old path
where everyone has walked:
do they hear ancient messages in the soil?
does the earth give you strength
when you walk on it?
may I touch the place where your heart
begins, here…?

2.

A banner in the field, a blue scroll furling
and floating, your name:

Beloved.

Joanna Wiebe, 1984

“But thine it is of nature to know what things thou wilt: so to thee will I give this lyre, thou glorious son of Zeus.” – Hermes to Apollo, Homeric hymn, “Hermes”, ca 600 BC

Here’s the grain of sand for this pearl:
the echo of a future ringing,
five silver bells
ringing like rain in clear air at your door.

Traveling, leading raids, bearing messages,

I’m always finding some bright thing
like these bells. I’ve an eye for luster.
Take them. I’ve noticed they sing of gods,
and dark places, and of the beginnings of wings.

(O my sweet bells! How could you be so unfaithful?!)

Joanna Wiebe, 1984

A long, low dark cloud spans the sky, blessing the day.

The festival’s over. The unseen sun tints a band of pink over the charcoal cloud; the pink is on the tents.

Here’s Pee Wee in his feathers and scraps hunting lost coins and cans.

Jiiva in orange prays “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” on the stage where last night a girl sang, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”

“People are pigs!” grunts the man in the sleeveless shirt, piercing paper.

“Gone home! Gone home!” shriek the gulls, scavenging a scummy surf of dinner detritus.

The dogwalker runs behind her three pups.

I’m running on cups, plates, fragments of soft-shell crab, cotton candy cones, purple burst balloons, grass pressed flat.

O where is the place—there’s a map in my heart—where we fell apart from each other—my leap from the high wire too soon. Instead of your hand, I touch Hermes’, pulling me down.

Joanna Wiebe, 1984

drawn on my iTouch

O Clock! Check! Key! Phone! Coin!

Touched every day, you know:
the clean fingertips,
the tapping of round nails,
the intimate space between the fingers,
the grip of the thumb; and
the prophecies of the palm,
his future in branching lines
pressed on your bland faces!
You absorb his heat.

Transform me:
what small, machine-mothered artifact
may I be?

Joanna Wiebe