Hammock
To a kitchen, to a jungle
To sanctum, to circus
As I rock in my hammock
and smell the warm bananas
baking with the butter and the wheat,
Smell the fecund river teeming
with piranhas and leeches and snakes the
girth of a strong man. Rocked,
in the hammock of that man’s
river, rocked in the woven nest
of all my histories, all my
distances from water. Betwixt
the curtain of line-dried laundry,
grandmother-hung and the curtain
of birdsong, tiger tongue. What
jungle? Whose kitchen, in whose
cottage? What chimney draws smoke,
what have you spoken of? Of confession —
of what sin. The reflection of the fence
on the water makes ripples, makes waves
What are they saying, written on the water
written on the waves, rocking, rocking
between my kitchen and my wild place.
