Don't Say My Name

Skull, axis, kernel of focus,
hub of center, genius of crisis,

Drain, swaddled in silken tufts,
shawl, veil, scarf, majestic loft.

Listing, harebrained, keeling,
right side up and upside down,

one big lonesome brain searching
through eternity for eyes, arms, legs,

forty acres and a mule,
kind neighbors, good luck, faithful

lovers. Big, guileless baby of a brain
searching through eternity

with cracks in its skull
nerve endings escape,

attracting bees like honey,
lightning bolts like thoughts,

nerve endings like smoky moths.
What fool thinks of strands

of hair as passing thoughts?
Who wants to comb them all

morning and stroke them back
to sleep all night?

Whose hands haven't
felt as if they've detached

to careen through space
like stray thoughts of a lost planet,

searching through space for your hair,
to touch it, to worship its source?

Copyright © 2009 Dara Wier All rights reserved
from Selected Poems
Wave Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission