The Red Wings From Your Lips Poem by L.B. Temuco

You sew with your small hands
sad nets, they are frayed in yellow threads
by the brine of habit
by the blind journeys
of fish that fly into the sun
you pull them both
the nets and the fish
back into the sea
the blue gaze of love in your heart
and they coil ungratefully
like angry serpents against you, taking
the hot flesh from your fingers
the little girl wanting from your eyes
the red wings from your lips
you spread and sink under a pale
skin of water.

It is always in the night when you come
and lay beside me
a great hungry space between us
we are the blood soil of hope
the golden ears of ancient fields
the heights of Machu Picchu
chariots race in our veins
our dreams flash by
on the faces of strangers
we open our bodies
in chasms of silence
we feel each wound
with each spear we love
and cry out

And then there is too much loudness
when you slip away
love leaks from my eyes
some irresolute voice
says goodbye
without turning to look
to see if I am undone
or to see the words bleed in my mouth
to wash my skin of you I cannot
to not love you I cannot
to know beneath the ground
concrete sleeps again
in its soundless crypt
with no knowledge of you passing
of your heart trembling

But rust never sleeps
and you are returned
to your perpetual promenade
you walk inside yourself
the ice blue dawn a thief
in whose cold outstretched hands
in whose thin light
we lay still-born
bury me in the earth
tread lightly over me as you pass
place by the edge of the ocean again
the stones from which water fled
my love, feel always
their incarnate curve