Scraps to Daub a Siren’s Lips

Siren, your lips are living laurels;
From them I was born.

Put these dead leaves to the hectic red
And leave me the cartography of the lines
Of beauty that live on your ancient lips.

The swollen kingdom of the vermillion border.

The divine counterpart to the human
Palm line from which we divine and sign

Our futures.

They move like under ocean currents
Hard to trace with eye or hand.

I still hold your fallen feather in mine,
Balanced between thumb and forefinger.

Tickled by the soft stroke
Of sea slick plumology.

I swim in salt waters.
I must learn to drink from them again.

Mine is the way of the fish,
Battered and wrapped in paper printed

With all my poetry.

Scraps to Daub a Siren’s Lips

My only thought
The isle, the isle, the isle.

The land that lives within your garland.

To-morrow, I will tell you how I will get there.