You rise up in the darkness,
over my body.
The white necklace at your throat,
the balls of ivory around your neck.
You open
your water-lily flesh
high up the side of the mountain in its own pond,
swaying, unafraid.
The blossoms rise small and tight
out of the green lips of the palmy leaves.

Need has found its breasts and entered them.
You invite me;
the leaves of your blooming are wide and wet.

The motionless bird on the chimney flies up.
I saw something there in the distance,
maybe another blackness like itself,
maybe the soft curl of sticks and hay woven in the circle of a nest.
The weave of darkness, the ivory beads, the sticks and hay
of our mingling breaths. We saw what the bird sees
and bore up our separate wings to that waiting nest.