I fell in love on Desolation Sound.
It was because the water was so still, it was
the uncertain depth, and I fell.
The feeling of falling
was like the wind waiting in the trees
or the islands, great sleeping beasts,
dreaming of emergence from their supine shores.
Wet dirt, wet grass, pines drenched with my own longing,
pines bending toward the water
as one.
I fell
when the wind plucked its way across the water, I fell
slowly and deliberately, I fell
and kept falling in the long grass.
I fell under the red madrona trees, ancient with longing, I fell
when your fingers touched my throat, and kept falling.
Somewhere else the ferries churned, voices sounded across
the expanse
but under the trees at the still point, with your
breath in my mouth, on the dreaming earth,
I found myself turning to stone,
then to wind, then to water, then to flesh.
I was all these things in your arms
in the stillness
while the day kept falling right through us,
through the trees, through the windows and walls,
through the still water shivering in my limbs and everywhere.
I fell
when at dusk the cold wind opened my face again, fell
when my shadow lengthened across the wide field
and joined me with the evening,
fell with the sharp light disappearing across everything we could see.
I fell in love on Desolation Sound,
it was at your exact touch
with your voice slipping into my veins
in the undivided silence in the dark and I fell
and kept falling
