Milk Drop Coronet - Harold Edgerton, 1937
Waking Inside You
First in somnolence
Then in slow surprise
We move as we breathe
Whose body’s idea
Was this anyway
Whose arms first rappelled
Down the slope of whose chest
Whose torso first evoked the
Incurve or outcurve of desire
Whose eyes opened at criticality
Sightless yet sighting
When the geometries of joining
Presented their furtive puzzle
Or was instinct enough
To guide us
Dowsing our mutual oasis
Hidden in our desert
Of petty betrayals
And conscious disappointments
That rule day
And interject night
How did we find ourselves
Battering sweetly through
Down to flesh
Into spirations
Of heat and water
Germinal sweat and
Inheld breath of desire
And now I transit
My dreams of
Flat open spaces
Dry big sky that
Accepts no depth of field
Awakening to swim
Your rhythmic sea
And your fluttering eyes
Startle like birds
Their dawn chorus
Of slow surprise
Launching into my sky
We become a time-lapse
Sleep-lapse loop
Of high-speed rose-openings
Laggard mitosis-quickenings and
Skittish clouds at dead run
Fleeing ravening suns that
Fly to zenith and set
Rise zenith and set
Burning vapor to memory
To come fully awake
After diving miles of sky
And miles of sea
Into a slow-motion splash
Milk drop crowns blooming
In Edgerton’s garden of strobe
Incredulous at our
Murmuring bundle
Of Mobius sheet
And linear leg
I could feel
Can still feel
Your salt mingling
With mine
Two oceans of mass
Lapping an isthmus of muscle
Then in slow surprise
We move as we breathe
Whose body’s idea
Was this anyway
Whose arms first rappelled
Down the slope of whose chest
Whose torso first evoked the
Incurve or outcurve of desire
Whose eyes opened at criticality
Sightless yet sighting
When the geometries of joining
Presented their furtive puzzle
Or was instinct enough
To guide us
Dowsing our mutual oasis
Hidden in our desert
Of petty betrayals
And conscious disappointments
That rule day
And interject night
How did we find ourselves
Battering sweetly through
Down to flesh
Into spirations
Of heat and water
Germinal sweat and
Inheld breath of desire
And now I transit
My dreams of
Flat open spaces
Dry big sky that
Accepts no depth of field
Awakening to swim
Your rhythmic sea
And your fluttering eyes
Startle like birds
Their dawn chorus
Of slow surprise
Launching into my sky
We become a time-lapse
Sleep-lapse loop
Of high-speed rose-openings
Laggard mitosis-quickenings and
Skittish clouds at dead run
Fleeing ravening suns that
Fly to zenith and set
Rise zenith and set
Burning vapor to memory
To come fully awake
After diving miles of sky
And miles of sea
Into a slow-motion splash
Milk drop crowns blooming
In Edgerton’s garden of strobe
Incredulous at our
Murmuring bundle
Of Mobius sheet
And linear leg
I could feel
Can still feel
Your salt mingling
With mine
Two oceans of mass
Lapping an isthmus of muscle
