white stone leaning on a black stone

on this day in history, i am already dead.
the ancient idea that i hate has risen,
poseidon-like, over my head and swallowed all my
wind-raged tangles of hair. the power that i had!
when i sang, the argonauts sank their ship.

the entrance to an idea as old as time,
the spartan slave who makes the bed
that the athenian citizen has to lie in.

oh, all the things i could have been:
i am old, i am old, i am old, and my skin
grows grey with every passing midnight.
(what is it to mourn your own youth?)
i am a seeking, sighing daughter of the earth.
when i sang, odysseus tore his flesh for me.

also known as a tuesday, a day in april that
does nothing, says nothing, is nothing.
your hand on mine, what does it signify?
we cross borders every day, you and i,
and it is in these crossings that i learned to love you;
i wonder where our feet will go tomorrow.

the rocks we kick across the neighborhood sidewalk,
the pebbles we flick between imaginary goalposts,
the stones falling out of our pockets after we roll on the beach:
underfoot and in between our toes and
rough against the grain of our skins,

i do not like the colors of the rocks
because they do not mix.

maybe after years of pressure from the earth,
maybe after eons of hot hot heat,
maybe after they threaten my inheritance
(which isn't financial at all)
maybe after i produce a gorgeous brown little boy
and name him after his father,
maybe after all the civilizations fall
one by one, like repentant children with evaporating dreams--

and this tuesday, this sunday, this sundown,
these are my witnesses. these, and the words of my son
who is not yet born, and my solitude, and this rain,
and the roads we kick our pebbles down.