Allowed to be Mysteries

Allowed to be Mysteries

People are allowed to be mysteries. Allowed to be mysteries:

kelp forests, clear salt-green cellulose and luminous,

women with their arms around dogs,

women with eyes containing multitudes.

Women with eyes containing:

languorous jimson weed, hemlock-foxglove-hyacinth

oleander larkspur, (deliriants, deliriously free,)

daphne and nightshade

irregular heartbeat scavengers.

People are allowed to be

largely inscrutable:

I read somewhere that datura is a beautiful woman,

that the stinging, hot ice of her irises-

well, her eyes are the color of irises,

and she knows her way around the sort of

labyrinthine bramble

that settles in my rib like a bone knife.

And I have been crippled by love of this craggy

pharaoh for several histories now:

consult the Luxor papyrus.

I store the shake of young hope in my pelvis

and wavering thighs,

having thought once that I knew a lot,

when all that I don't know is a palmy and

loving expanse of good ground.

These days of gentle fractals

are allowed to be mysteries.

I drum them out on my collarbone

like a line of lapis beads.

Lying upside-down, the days look

just like elementals. The nights

look just like crane flies