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The Mushroom Woman drew a muscle from her own thigh cream and brown I remember seeing her as she walked the dew her thighs cool, smelling of earth.
The Mushroom Woman drew a muscle from her thigh and made it into flesh. She called it man.
When she saw what she had made, she wept
still she shaped him with cool fingers nose, eyes, hair, lips
these she parted breathed him alive.
This is the quiet indulgence, sitting here, these keys clicking together like rosary beads, or the soft click of amber against amber
the rain's incessant window-tapping making a music, me space-filled, the wind I'm listening to entering me like silk blowing
or spider's threads coming together to weave some sound from nothing, thinking back to conversations and dreams, the sweet insistence of diastole systole diastole,
the movement of breath among mountains, a Ghazal woven into a carpet, or the soft click of raindrops ambered against a window.
It is almost a prayer this time of morning, that I may never know certainties,
it is almost a litany of outside coming in, an opening of blood and sinews and bones, the interstices of my body allowing the universe to enter in all its tattered glory.
This is a prayer I am praying in the quiet, wild hours of morning, sweet lord of night bless me, sweet lady of the far-seeing eyes cover me with a silk shroud.
In a room full of collage and music hung a painting. Pale smoke, the lemon of winter night, arctic blue in the light of snow. Deep orange burnt into slim oblong, a tree on fire. Indigo, the eyes of a cormorant seen in Madras.
Beneath, or somehow below the shadows of trees, I caught a glimpse of horizons burning
and beyond the horizons burning I caught a chill breathing, full and slow. I could feel the mist pour from the mouth of a polar bear as she made ready to plunge into an ocean.
In the harbour at the side of the painting, where the pale lemon light shone, I saw a woman. She was carrying a fishing net filled with tangerines and mackerel which she threw into the sky. And I saw the sun rise.
Beside her a man playing an ocarina, was sitting under a baobab tree. It was filled with monkeys and bears and stars and black apes and singing African elephants. And hot snakes bellied across the sand.
It was a marvel. Green and grey and lemon and burnt orange mangroves fell from his music, the woman danced as the sun rose and the man laughed and it was good.
All the instruments of sound born from stones flew towards them, circling like great fruit bats. I woke with a grain of sand in my palm.
May green lizards walk across the keyboard of your world, pausing now and then to lick their feet clean of letters
may a pheasant searching for its mate find her under the Magnolia Stellata at the far end of your garden
may monkeys scatter leaves for you as you search for somewhere to lay your head below level of the wind
may the spiders that haunt the crevices of your mind go spin their webs in someone else's woodshed
may the hot hand of a child always be there for you when you're feeling sad or afraid.
May you hear my name when you least expect it, you may always call out for me, I'll always hear
because it is there in the wind and the stars and the frogs purring in the pond as they spread their nets of spawn,
because your voice is like a tiny bird struggling to break out of the shackles of its shell,
because your voice is home to me when I'm afraid in the dark time of morning when the house breathes its unexpected noises.
May you always have some snow on the north slopes of your land to remind you of winter
and when the summer sun warms the soil to copper, may you have crab chowder to eat after a day on the water.
May you come to me each night in my dreams, hold me, call my name, hold me, call my name.
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