Just Barely Above Water


i. i am itching, pregnant with incumbent summer

i feel very young

i am smelling

the beginnings of honeysuckle

the beginnings of living in lengths of light


it is the blossoming in me

of the knowledge of the need to have our stories heard.


it is the telling in me

that has frozen and flowed

and frozen again in new winter

and flows slowly now at first... rising... over its banks

drenched by heave rainfall

which is the voice of the clouds which convene over my new city.


ii. i ask simply to be judged on a meter of light.

it will come from my eyes... like sky in spring

recognized in an instant theough obscured by clouds all winter:

it was not forgotten.

like the sun i have saved myself

to come breaking through newly thawed windows

golden, uninvited, welcome.

fading... restless and volatile

from traveling all night under lids and lashes

all my dreams are the movement of light during sleep.



Words by Allegra Chabay. ©1999



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