Mermaid Dreaming Fish into Diatonic Scales

Twelve clocks in circular ticking is dream music.

I say moon, in Vedic hand signals.

Every mudra is a recipe for bread.

Yeast is birdsong – a leavening that starts us daily.

When I rise, it is into hilarity and crescendo of green forest.

I pine for you, beloved.

You taught me vertical, as in Hazelrod,

and most certainly, horizontal…

In a circle of 300 mysteries,

I translate myself into the wisdom of salmon

and sweet nut meats.

Re-imagine the alphabet of lichen,

at the miraculous visit of stag and doe.

I count by color: Indigo,

Sterling knight, larkspur, and faerybells

heard in a number between seven and nine.

I learn this by touch, taste the inventive possibility of clematis

in the arms of honeysuckle,

an embrace of sentient fragrance.

Brew tea and sip.

Heat is the clavicle of the morning dove,

what bones know, first shine returned of eclipsed crescent.

The yielding back into our eyes, you in my arms.

Bedtime is a story of woodpecker and willow wave,

a map drawn by bee dance, whirr of mixer in dough,

long strands we develop by knead and push,

one foot on the ground,  one resting forward, towards next time,

door to our secret hearts thoroughly open.

Light a fire in the horno, when the heat turns paper

a color practiced by live oak,

we’ll make love, I mean,

bread.

~

Thirst is for Knowing Water

Drink this,

moons spin and whirl in the offworlds of the heart.

Such water as I carry is his, by worth, by curve

of smile and horizon.

In dream, he lifted the cup, saying, Drink this,

I tasted the wild sage of Grenada,

fireflies in a veil of evening,

the kissed stones of Mecca.

Monarch butterflies in flight 3 generations,

knowing no origin but desire.

My thirst is that migration, that carried cup, that shiver,

fever, cloud.

He is mirror, door, whisper, fire, husky-tongued moonlight.

This thirst is not for quenching,

But for drowning in.

I offer my body’s secret body

to the Dark One.

The wind in the piney canyon

is tonight, his voice,

strong and musical, under Lyra and the Scales, the Lion Rampant.

Drink this,

I do and taste sovereignty

Inside this surrender.

Flickers take wing, over hills, over ridgeline,

I follow

crossing thresholds

to his bed,

scent of honeysuckle and wetland.

Judyth says, I listen closely

to the voice of the Beloved.

From the seed of one dropped decibel,

mountains rise.

Inside his cadence,

fresh rivers spring.

~

Editor: Hayley Samuelson

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Judyth Hill is a poet, teacher, author, living wildly as ever, on our bougainvillea bejeweled ranchito, Simple Choice Farm, just outside San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She has published 6 poetry collections, innumerable magazine articles, & wrote the hitthe-Bigtime poem: Wage Peace (it’s right here in elephant journal!)and takes writers & foodies all over the world on WildWriting Culinary adventures, www.eat-write-travel.com. Contact her at  [email protected]