Because My Tongue Knows the Taste of Water…
Because my tongue knows the taste of water,
curls around it to create
an ocean, an ecosystem,
Poseidon’s only home,
the place of birth’s beginning,
Because my skin remembers the wind,
outlines in raised cells the path Fall’s breeze
rushed past, stopped and returned to,
coquettish and shy like a young girl
who recognized her desire,
Because my eyes when unsteady
dissolve, leak secrets, or stare clear through
all present views,
See unwaveringly eventual death
in the first blade of Spring’s grass,
see death in the stretched lips and laugh of a friend,
see death in the taunt, majestic, massive skin
of the house of an unborn child,
see beauty in a crimson slash of bleeding blood,
complements of plasma and a cat’s claw,
Because my ears detect the voice of my mother,
barely discernable, sweet and needing,
sometimes when I am alone, but are unable to hear
her southern tone and the way I sound like her
when we are together,
Because my lips have pledged love
and kissed and kissed lips
whose contours have shifted in memory
like clouds dragged through the sky to oblivion
leaving a space which suggests they never existed,
as if they did not matter,
Because in the winter I am sometimes robbed of scent
and forced to survive on other senses,
clutching tissues and lozenges,
wondering, if it can be lost so easily,
how necessary it was to begin with,
Because time changes, even as it
sets rhythm to the world,
causes great disasters to be synchronized,
planes caught and missed,
weddings planned,
lives fixed,
Because I know what I refuse to admit,
and am unsure of all the facts
I have used to convince others,
Because I have all this love,
moved my body in so many intimate dances,
spoken infinite numbers of words,
read so many lines of other peoples’
tries at infinity…
Because one day all of this will matter
so greatly because then, there, at that moment,
from these lips, before those eyes, silently--
a taste hither to unknown,
a sensation felt in dreams,
a smell as of yet indescribable…
It will all fail me.
© Coleen T. Houlihan
Because my tongue knows the taste of water,
curls around it to create
an ocean, an ecosystem,
Poseidon’s only home,
the place of birth’s beginning,
Because my skin remembers the wind,
outlines in raised cells the path Fall’s breeze
rushed past, stopped and returned to,
coquettish and shy like a young girl
who recognized her desire,
Because my eyes when unsteady
dissolve, leak secrets, or stare clear through
all present views,
See unwaveringly eventual death
in the first blade of Spring’s grass,
see death in the stretched lips and laugh of a friend,
see death in the taunt, majestic, massive skin
of the house of an unborn child,
see beauty in a crimson slash of bleeding blood,
complements of plasma and a cat’s claw,
Because my ears detect the voice of my mother,
barely discernable, sweet and needing,
sometimes when I am alone, but are unable to hear
her southern tone and the way I sound like her
when we are together,
Because my lips have pledged love
and kissed and kissed lips
whose contours have shifted in memory
like clouds dragged through the sky to oblivion
leaving a space which suggests they never existed,
as if they did not matter,
Because in the winter I am sometimes robbed of scent
and forced to survive on other senses,
clutching tissues and lozenges,
wondering, if it can be lost so easily,
how necessary it was to begin with,
Because time changes, even as it
sets rhythm to the world,
causes great disasters to be synchronized,
planes caught and missed,
weddings planned,
lives fixed,
Because I know what I refuse to admit,
and am unsure of all the facts
I have used to convince others,
Because I have all this love,
moved my body in so many intimate dances,
spoken infinite numbers of words,
read so many lines of other peoples’
tries at infinity…
Because one day all of this will matter
so greatly because then, there, at that moment,
from these lips, before those eyes, silently--
a taste hither to unknown,
a sensation felt in dreams,
a smell as of yet indescribable…
It will all fail me.
© Coleen T. Houlihan
