Contemplating My Husband as a Storm Passes: Constructing a New Language

I would say all the geese must fly
in the eye of the storm. I would hear
the cars rip water in half with
crash and crash. I would
say a gloaming churns in the roiling
sky. I would say the clouds are our
bodies making a mixture of identity. But
I'm not going to say it. I'm going
to lie here listening to that one damn
dog bark and try to think up a new language
with which I can speak to you. I begin
with messages encoded in my eyelashes.
When they go unnoticed, I finger the sheets.
Still nothing.

Like many, I stir my thoughts with the same
destruction of digestion and so
I eat the words I'd
rather say -- you are an abacus;
you are a bruise, you are a caw, a call
a cry by all the flocks of birds about which
I dream and I am still chewing when you awaken.
When I had never known you, but then met you,
it was like contracting for eternity as well as something like
an eye of the storm. I would say the geese must fly there.
I would say, I hear the cars move as if through
saliva. I would, but I won't. I have eaten
enough for now.

Copyright Louise Robertson