Poem of the Day

Too tired to think straight. Luckily, I have another one from my poetry pal.

Not Only Fire
By Wendy Brown-Báez

How did I emerge from your rib
the very one I slept against next
to your heartbeat, curled and certain.

How did you unfold me
like a paper flower on its long stem
petal by petal, bent back

into deepening color with each
press, until at last the surprised
mouth that did not know until this

moment how much it longed to
drink from yours, the fiery tongue
that tweaks my nerves into flame

those long rolled r’s filling
my senses with liquid joy.
How did you emerge out from my

small gesture of sympathy, the tears
I cupped to my heart like a string of
pearls, mine alone, out from the loss

of the oyster. How he moistened the grit
day by day in their underwater depths,
how I learned the way

to pry him open.

Here’s one sent by my poetry buddy. Now I’m going to bed and hoping I don’t wake up tomorrow morning feeling crippled from shoveling snow.

Closer
By Wendy Brown-Báez

Because the night is sweet
and you are close, I lean into
the caress of your voice, I lean
my heart right against
yours

Perfect symmetry
of one plus one
is no more than
the beat of my heart
in you, the pulse
of your rhythm
in me.

This was sent by a poetry pal.

How About Silence?
By Wendy Brown-Báez

What if we had no words?
What if the only way we could speak was with the
Expression in our eyes, arch of the eyebrow
Fingers touching
What if you came to me moving in silence
And laid beside me
With roses
What if I held your face in my hands
Like a crystal ball
Seeing the child in you, foreseeing the old man
Appreciating the fine lines
Forming around your eyes
While noting the twinkle
What if I gave myself into your hands
And there were no words to
Distract us
What if each touch was slow and distinct
If each breath formed a hum
A melody, a rhythm
And in the spaces between, only silence

What if we woke up creating patterns
Diagrams, scattered beams of light with our
Hands our legs our backs
Our breath
What if we used taste to tell each other
How much we love, how much we desire
How much we can not, how much we will
What if we swallowed truth like a holy wafer
Made from what we can know
With our blood our salt
Our bones

What if we no longer were capable of argument
Or misunderstandings
And we could only hear the way our bodies move
Toward each other and away
Like waves on a beach
Like buds opening to day
And folding at night
Like the spin of galaxies
And the journey of the moon
What if we ran out of words
What if we were unafraid to be completely silent?

Here is one sent by my poetry buddy.

Certainty
By Wendy Brown-Báez

It is in this moment
when I am alone
that I am most sure
that you love me.

Face to face I am consumed
with the breathless astonishment
of my body breaking away from me
running and melting
like rainbows in a puddle
whose only urge is to reach the sea.

I forget myself:
who I am and why I exist:
except for this moment
awaiting your kiss.

I am so enchanted
by the sight or your bare shoulders,
the ears above your neck,
and the dark pools of your eyes,
I don’t know whether my mouth
has opened itself to speak.

It is only later,
when I am alone,
that I remember
how you leaned closer to
hear my words
how you took me
in an embrace
as brief as a shrug

leaving the mark
of my heated body
scorched all over yours.

This is another one from my poetry pal.

The Perfect Moment
By Wendy Brown-Báez

Maybe it was when you stretched out on the
couch and said, Sing me a lullaby,
the way you clutched the pillow to your chest
like a young child and I became the
mama who knew what to do for her boy.

Maybe it was when I settled myself to take your
head into my lap, the way you became the man
I had caressed those years of floating
out the evening until we could go to bed
and I would be comforted by human warmth
to mask our haunting fear.

Maybe it was the way you sank into sleep
and I watched your breath rising and falling
until my hand grew still and I fell back against the
pillow and slept as well, satisfied.

My poetry buddy is introducing me to Wendy Brown-Báez, and I’m so glad!

Absence
By Wendy Brown-Báez

I am more here in your bed
than anywhere without you.
It is after all your breath I am
breathing in the thick midnight
walls. Remembering how you told

me you wake up at three, I
awake. You need no mention
of dreams. I carry them
stillborn over the threshold
of this place so mine because

it belongs to you. Even your
past cannot creep between
us when I cradle you in my
hunger. When I stoke your
black hair like silk in my

hands, never doubting the
beat I hear is the high tide coming
to beach me on the precipice
over which I float away,
using my wings like love.