sand in the wind
formerly unfelt fine sand
registers now
rasping against bare skin

sanded air from everywhere
erodes thickened skin
to transparency
non-protective thin

keen as filed fingertips
or worn teeth
unarmed against the sand
nerves sense each grain point
stoned by endless wind

c. 1970

battle fatigue

I don't want to live anymore
with porcupines
every evening in my corner
I have the quills to pull out from my skull
(starred now with prick scars)
from that day's measure of language

since always we have pressed quills
dyed them vegetable hues
woven them in doeskin
to gift with shields those of the tender surfaces

that is over for me
I long to make a line
enclosing us
where any porker crossing
hackles up
is a dead pricker.

2/14/76 [Note: I was teaching at Morningside College; my male colleagues at that time thought that feminism was a joke and that we had no sense of humor. This poem may mark my first movement toward intentional community.]

Stunted

The tree of heaven
is an imposter.
Through millenniums
in radical drive toward central fire,
he holds
against repeated assault,
lifts praying hands
to smiling Grace.

Sheltered by his arms,
a dwarfed damned disinherited
mulberry
catches upon her leaves
dapples of light
sucks dry earth
twists gingerly
into what is left of space.

5/29/76

tree under wires strung

tree under wires strung
at a given height
in her growth toward fullness
touches their border
     signal for the electric company
     with trucks and men and ladders
     and power saws and power grinders
     to put her shrieking limbs
     through the teeth of hell
     to lop them off one after another
     and another and another
no help anywhere

          earth strewn      thousand leaves
               — light sustenance —
          torn      rough uncare      limbs
               — intricate liquid trails —
                              mobile grace
          wind blows scent
                         a throwaway

the men pass on to others
similarly unsaved
and she stands cropped
bleeding at the cuts
grotesquely lessened
to propriety
                    her form acceptable

12/20/75, published in See: A Visual Spectrum of the Arts, Jan-Feb, 1978

Dido

love-crazed little doll
on Cupid's string

what you thinking of, bitch
fawning servile
forgot
didn't you
your city
half-raised
waiting

forgot
didn't you
me
half-raised
waiting

Aeneas had a job to do
and did it
Dido had a job to do
and
burned herself up instead

Don't cry in my face, Queen
I saw you
fall on Aeneas' sword
just when I needed
a city I could live in.

11/30/74

wilderness dark
for Adrienne Rich

if our whirly bird
comes folding
peace in her wings
she damn well better
plan on St. Joan
running on before
baptizing
in fire

10/21/77

Adrienne Rich

Your music has been the tail of our comet
pointing out where we have been,
our fragmented cinderstream
eternally
describing an ellipsis.

We form ourselves
into a line dance now;
your head burns
through outer limits
toward air we can spread light against
to get back blue glowing.

Behold ourselves become
more than the fine scratch in the void
that is momently
gone for another hundred years.

We become one
centered
expanding within
our own.

10/28/77