My Wild Twin

In a tenuous place of unpossessable riches

I have carved out a hollow - made a home,

where she and I can rest in our restlessness.

We meet only by chance, and on thresholds;

once, within the sound bow of a great bell

where the touch of wind transformed

into the language of deep water.

.

She is my Equinox elder sister,

the space between our natal breaths

a precise inflection point

wherein the sticky, fermenting rot

of late summer fruits

lying bruised and broken underfoot

met the coppery, champagne aldehyde

of an early hard frost.

.

Without her I am an animal bride,

enslaved to domestication.

Without me she has neither tongue

for speech, nor anyone to listen.

Alone together, we settle

into the moment we steal from gravity

between a leaping and a landing,

or a slipping and a shattering.

.

There should always be tension

on the line that ties one’s wildness

to the discipline of its expression.

Hers is the ecstasy,

and mine the clumsy,

tangible,

brick by brick labor of construction.

But ours is the restive susurration

of an orchestra preparing to play,

and the warmth of fresh bread,

honeyed, torn open bare-handed.

.

At sunrise, on a narrow strip of earth

belonging to no one, we patrol

hand in hand, our heads bare.

Around us, cavalries of carousel horses

mark our progress and grow uneasy.

Riderless haunches tensed,

glassy eyes rolling,

they wait to resume a war

between inhalation and exhalation;

between a question and its own answer.