But thou, most ungentle of the sweeping winds, why art thou
bent on waging war with me?...What wouldst thou do,
were it not that love is known to thee? -Ovid, Heroides
This morning, watching your pale legs jump
beneath me in bed, knees bent to know
my cupped palms, ankles arching
out - I came again to that field of first
yearning, first Boreal stirrings, the Indian grass
grown sway now with ascendancy, those four winds
unyielding. A child, I knew the rise of horse and hill, low
bowl of the sea as the earth tipped itself sweetly
toward desire, and I came up breathless from beneath.
The waves broke above me. The hills below.
Farther off a young man pushed a bicycle alongside and up
a steepness of days. Ladderless, the sun climbed.
Some mornings after I would wake, a woman
of twenty, my body (stilled windmill in sleep) now
startled, now animate - your breath on me.
Outside the wind picks up. The fan blades -
mill’s arms stir. As if to reconcile the body with its
fragile resistance, the cornsilk
hairs along my stomach sway. Back and back,
to Orithyia, the field in fog. Chost-green, the shadows,
wet shine of her northern eyes.
When he comes for her. Says low Love’s country’s
not far from here now. When wingless
she goes trembling to relief.