Learning to Love the Leaves
(1972, age 19)
When I look for you in my memory
it is your back I see.
Your back, like the hull of a ship.
Women are like snails,
inching across a world which is
of course just a bedroom,
touching waves of voice and gesture
with tiny moist papillae,
making our livings on what we find
like this.
I move my tongue across you're back.
It tastes like sea water,
dried by an offshore wind.
anh hell. go scrape your barnacles
and ship out, sailor boy.
I'm learning to love the leaves.
Cece
