Susan Wicks
Sleeping alone
Tonight will be my first night,
the air entering as it pleases,
leaving me porous, and wiser.
Tonight I shall watch the moon
cast its sliding shadow
on my sheets, in the pit of my pillow.
Rolled in my mouth, my tongue
is growing fat. By morning
it will have found the farthest places.
I will be silver, I will be slippery,
turning under fine meshes
till the fishermen throws up his hands
and runs from me. I will be solitary.
Even dreams will abandon me,
the sea wind translate
whatever it can stir of me,
my feet entering the morning
while my head still sleeps,
the distant shoreline receding
and irrelevant, its line of strung flesh
already salted, drying.
Waves curl from me across coral
long and light as bones
that break and belong to no one.
I will stretch out my limbs
to the bed’s unwrinkled corners
and touch nothing. When I wake
no one will have known me.
the air entering as it pleases,
leaving me porous, and wiser.
Tonight I shall watch the moon
cast its sliding shadow
on my sheets, in the pit of my pillow.
Rolled in my mouth, my tongue
is growing fat. By morning
it will have found the farthest places.
I will be silver, I will be slippery,
turning under fine meshes
till the fishermen throws up his hands
and runs from me. I will be solitary.
Even dreams will abandon me,
the sea wind translate
whatever it can stir of me,
my feet entering the morning
while my head still sleeps,
the distant shoreline receding
and irrelevant, its line of strung flesh
already salted, drying.
Waves curl from me across coral
long and light as bones
that break and belong to no one.
I will stretch out my limbs
to the bed’s unwrinkled corners
and touch nothing. When I wake
no one will have known me.
Susan Wicks’ latest collection, Night Toad: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe) is a Poetry Book Society recommendation for autumn 2003.
Page(s) 46
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