They ran through markets
elms strung with sari’s
bedecked with jewels and
girls kenning their heads
babes at their breast
growing crowns of red and indigo
she pressed into my palm
the spell of her rune
smelling of Finnish water stone
rubbed over and over beneath time
leaves still containing their flung pigment
where slippered feet ran and picked them
casting their glass throng to glory
she has the shiny hair of a child and
cheeks full for her pressed size
she who is gone and now returned
talking in other languages with Irish accent
she who manifests and disappears and is reborn
doesn’t look large enough to give birth
or sing at the top of a road the song of her
we were
separated by water and fear and longing
broken in sea, put back together by current
I was always swimming in her direction and the
light tread of her spring
she is a carnival of paper-cut outs
wearing scarlet hose and rings on her toes
yet upward / yet down in earth where
roots inform her choices as well as ancestor
she is of me and I
am stranger and intimate
familiarity is a rubbed sleeve on silver
her thin knees beneath duvet
twitching dreams caught in muslin
tents in high wind holding their claim
sheared gravity, she is lifted from her sail
and through the tarot of her eyes
I see each snapshot and Rorschach blot
when they told us friendship will expire
they did not know
the language of ink and how
it leaves itself
swirling for paper
on which to draw
us