FLOW
As your pink toes touch
the scalding water
you discover that your voice
is a veneer cast on stone;
your sight, a dilation of age
upon age; unhurried – sinking
in the languid furnace to your knees,
your chest – the roots and vines
have crept only to the dead banks,
as if what escapes from the deep
livid pocket (neck and jugular)
is untranslatable: the wooden pillars
of the summer dock grow scales,
a corrupted reptilian green; you are
immovably articulate by now,
your skin, loosened and wrinkled,
as the forgotten ichor in your blood
uncoils; your capillaries widen
to a sleepy gaze inwards and
sky, blood-warm and buried
under so many years of cold.
(c)2006 Rocco de Giacomo
JANUARY