Twins
A child from each of them, The economist and The engineer.
Twins.
One tamarind, One date.
A forked tree.
One boy, One girl.
Apollo and Artemis.
One cinnamon, One nutmeg.
One philosopher, One poet.
One alchemist, One perfumist.
One method, One madness.
An egg from each ovary. The left and the right,
May each hand know What the other is doing.
Long braids and curls shorn close. The Tigris and the Euphrates. The olive and the branch.
Let me be completed and redeemed.
Let me sin and be forgiven.
Let me bear in pain and nurse in joy.
Let me be buried by four hands more.
I have tried to run, Let me be caught.
Let Mother become a name I am accustomed to.
Let wisdom suit me. Let service lose its tediousness.
Let what emerges from me Dig the spot where I'll sleep in the ground.
Let what escapes from me Carry on my sound.
The cicada and the locust.
The cave and the clay.
The pulse and the weep. Let twins emerge From a single home.
Let twins take root And grow.
Let two ovals Reside in my nest.
These mornings after having Made love, somewhere near
4 am, the blue light starts peeking through The window and I begin to think of myself
As a white oak whispered to, climbed on, Sat under, aging through changing landscapes
With road signs coming and going, Pink azaleas and wild honeysuckle
Forsythia and ranch-style homes, Where there were once colonials
Or shotgun shacks And the dirt became pavement,
And yet here, I reside. Gray streaks And wrinkled bark covering over
More and more rings underneath My wideness, ready to produce
Two more on an island battered. My daughter becomes my midwife,
Goddess of hunt and childbirth They are both circumstances covered
In blood. And let her catch him, my prophet, Musician and healer.
Let them both be an opus For my union with two great men,
However soon they are to leave, Two men, tall and dark,
Who had me read to them And read themselves to me.