Dawn

Aurora is wont

to the diurnal

voyeurs waiting

on her portico.

They stand on

the sighing wood

like dogs

at green beef,

sniffing it,

but reluctant

to take a bite

from any animal

that bleeds for a week

and doesn’t die:

what is lurking

in the center cut

like a copperhead

in the briars

at the tree line,

where the dirt

is always moist

but not mud, not

without a heavy

rain.  She wades

in the whispering

wind: a subtle cup

of rose tea,

steaming soft as skin

fresh from a bath

of bodies: swimming

insides of wild

and woolly mammals,

and mammary glands,

and field working hands

that were once

polished, pale as lace

gloves and Vaseline.

She was often

found lying alone

and naked

in the woods,

with some ancient

cypress root

growing up her cunt,

twisting its way in,

sending her

into wet fits.

They are spying

on her through

the telescope

on her window’s

peak: they think

she is dying

to never come back,

but each morning,

she sits up

and is disentangled,

the root snaking

back into the ground,

and she hitches

a ride on the back

of a lark, chases

the dark, back to

its watery place.

There, she waits

for it to return

the dusk, gradiate

its musk with her

cerulean magnetism:

a wasp of pink smoke

plumes into a tulip-

bulb in her front garden,

the circular one,

under the dogwood tree

that she planted

as a sapling: a gift

from Gaia

as a token to loveliness,

a bond to earthiness

and all that is

assertively feminine.