Summer Sapphics
by Marilyn Taylor
Maybe things are better than we imagine
if a rubber inner-tube still can send us
drifting down a sinuous tree-draped river
like the Wisconsin —
far removed from spores of touristococcus.
As we bob half-in and half-out of water,
with our legs like tentacles dangling limply
under the surface
we are like invertibrate creatures, floating
on a cosmic droplet — a caravan of
giant-sized amoebas, without a clear-cut
sense of direction.
It's as if we've started evolving backwards:
mammal, reptile, polliwog, protozoon —
toward that dark primordial soup we seem so
eager to get to.
Funny, how warm water will whisper secrets
in its native language to every cell — yet
we, the aggragation, have just begun to
fathom the gestures.
POETRY, June 1999, p. 142
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