Incantation

When I slide
When I salamander
When I snail
When I vessel hollow
When I answer, echoed

When he anothers
When he another and anothers

When he fathers, when I miss my father
when I was fathered, when their father
When feathers, I find owl feathers
I find death feathers
find abandon

When I phoebe, black phoebe
When sweet tastes bitter
When tongue slides, slides familiar
When I thigh on thigh and hip on hip him
When I zing, electric arc, when I hum dizzied
When I word lick skin
When I skin stick, when I seek
When I salamander, when I seastar
When I hook on, hang on, slick
When I slide one longing onto another
When I’m pinned, when I

When I mistake
When I blue skink tail, slink
When I lily and aster, lupine and iris
When I serpentine and secret
When I snail, salamander
When I echinoderm
I metabolize the world

I nerve and unnerve
When I mind him, when I mind
My mind when he
my mind when bitter

My feathers, my father
When I remember
When the record turns
Turn over, turn over
Turn Ry Cooder over
When I salamander, remainder

When I limpet home scar, when I scrape, when I tongue slide and slide
When I’m skin to skin, when I fall
like feather like dust like water
petals pink flags on the flags
When I slide
When I drench words and dry keep them
When I lie

I’d hate to be his wife, I lie
Who am I satellite,
Who is moon, who is tether
Another night, another face all night

I moth light, I love electric and I lie
I when remember
I when newts slide
I when lemons grow
I am when remember
When skin on skin and lip to lip
When I confuse, fuse
When I pulse, when I could, when we could
When nothing happens

And then the click
then echo echo

Then I in salt water
roll in shallow lapping, roll in tide waters
When I ocean, mountain
When my heart is the mountain
When mountain and I lap ocean
Lips up to sun together

Then stone slide
Then sun skin
Then slow salamander, scrape circle
Slide kelp on cobble
Then salt water scrape
Then sun eye
Seek sun, quiver
When I am seen and seeing
Water feathers on skin, on stippled bay
I tongue and find the missing the missing
the father still missing, wing feather spiraling down

O sun in my eye, my eye the sun
O skin and sign, oh sigh and siren
O sun still holding, see, see me seeing
how I run my finger the length of the day

How I mountain walk and west
How the night is turning
It’s how it turned out
The seeking, the echo
The scar and scrape, the clinch and break
It’s how we are turning
with catkin with tarweed
with clatter and feather
and with every rib stretch, with every clench and ache
with every intake and catch
I metabolize the world