Mother of Alphabets

You call me from the under skin of sleep
beyond the dream of dust and drought,
of spring floods and rings of fire.
You store in the heart’s hollow a perfect memory.
Your soft-skinned inner arms begin the story of my life.

You teach me how to enter the day
how to be quiet, morooned in a tongue of shade
where there’s no sound as startling as silence.
Musing on the black keys,
I know what I know.

how the seasons insist and encourage,
how dark eyes of water glitter through grass in the spring
how the heart tugs at the end of September
how December’s crust leads me back to frozen footsteps and idling light.

Snake dancing before the blaze
I’m blanketed by winds
protected by cave shadows
but if I step out of the circle
the earth worm will find me

Better a damaged day of almost spring
expanding without limits than a safe haven austere and silent.
Better the cactus and its thorny geometric
than the night-blooming orchid.
There is no such thing as no such thing
and I am oracle and secret
like a lone feather on the breath of a wind