Category
PoemsVENUSIAN SOLSTICE RENEWAL
The sun got under my skin,
Denuded my skeleton
And blanched my bones.
Below the canopy of night,
Ink splashed with white,
Coyotes tore my limbs and stole them in every direction.
My body became desert sands
Scattered with cactus seeds
Waiting for rain.
The Earth circled the Sun.
The Moon turned from old to young.
Light and dark battled, until day won.
Midsummer, at early dawn
The searching sea found me.
A sigh of mist,
Respiration rippled across liquid skin.
Waves spread a broad smile on the shore.
Tongues of water reached the desert
And retrieved the particles I had become.
From high dry lands I rolled down,
Tumbling in the froth of retracting surf,
Ecstatically disbursing into the fluid, saline abyss.
Then the embrace of tidal force
Pulled each part into coherence.
This is how I became a pearl.
Catherine Brooks, 2023
Photo: Catherine Brooks