Dormant
       

We sleep so naturally,
arms unsheathing our hungry bellies,
crevices wrapped in heavy tendrils

of scent. Thin bones threaded
through damp hair, we pluck
from the body, blue jean, t-shirt,

a blue cotton skirt. We breathe out
everything that isn't us to leaf-strewn
pathways, fold each other

like crushed origami to earth.
Knead bodies like a dough of flame,
rise. Like bread

torn from the loaf, each undoes
his wrought self, takes to bed
tenderness that falls apart: not

muscled black Percherons
whose fleshy tread seeds the harvest
of pock-marked fields. Not blue

trout brushing reckonable fins,
dropping amber eggs among
the moss-covered stones of cold rivers.

Hibernating wolves and bears
released to the cave's dark loam,
heady with sweet multiplication.

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Copyright © 2014 Katherine Smith All rights reserved
from Woman Alone on the Mountain
Iris Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission