A woman with a red bear behind her eyes makes the sun
Rise and smile green over a lake with herds of mist that print
The path of carnivores across the outlined willow line.
Small boats go by as the air clears and the moon pales
And the bottom of the water rises like a mirror
From the floor. A song comes down on the wind, erasing night.
She remembers
A woman wrote the shape
Of willow stands on the surface
Of an urban puddle deep
At night while traffic rushed at her
Hands. A several human
Circle banded at the sidewalks
And shouted high to the yellow
Windows bright from leaning high-
Rises–for quiet, for listening,
For food that could
Be given the woman
And then the drivers abandoned
Their engines–for quiet, for listening,
For food that could be given
The woman and she moistened
Her finger and wrote
Every future circle
Onto the surface of the streets
In the form of curly willows.
She stood and they followed
–for quiet, for listening–
As soon every
Black became green
With tiger and red
With bear (in her memory)
And the alleys and their cans
Shook with calls, screams,
The shouts of ancestors
Wondering where their lives
Went in the willow letters.
He turned to the woman and said, “Let’s get out of here before one of them sees us.”
“But we’ve already seen them and we have miles to go yet before we find a bed to rest on and once you see them they’ll never let you go,” she said. “I know these things.”
He said, “Turn already. We can leave by another way. There’ll be plenty of time to wet our fingers (in my case, claw), time to erase that tiger tail from the middle region of my eyes, from the moth’s wing (remember that story about the moth?), from the language on the streets.”
Now she stands alone at the river line, ready to live,
Ready to lend, the ghosts of greener memories fading
Behind the willows which are the trace of other art forms, sonnets,
Sumac, frog eyes, a man at he door saying “let me in” and she saying
“No, let me out, where the moon is a hole into another world
Where willows paint brown and curly behind her eyes. Print the path.
