The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Vanessa Gebbie

TO NOT BE WATER

I would not be water more than I am.

You, a mathematician, say
I am little more than tides,

I respond to the moon. Ebb and flow
As blood replaces blood, and cell, cell.
Nothing but a small ocean.

I would not be water more than that.
Not salve to drought,
Holding monsters of the deep,

Not be cloud, or rain,
Not sit stagnant and green
Where cattle tongue and tread,

Or be the stillness of a lake,
Lilies growing over my darkest parts.

Except I might be your mirror

And, were I to be water more
You would lift me up, needing,
And I would be swallowed whole.





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