ARCHEOLOGY OF FALLING
there's nothing to prove she begins
this is not a competition you have to win
in the ancient cistern in Istanbul
it's an exploration she continues
a landscape of foreign complexities
of the unexamined
Medusa her proud head and neck — a column
all I ask is two things she whispers
as over and over the possibilities replay themselves
snake hair wide eyes green with time
no lies and unconditional love
he's listening yet laughing pursuing archeology
the unexamined vessel the hidden smile
stone-face turned herself to stone
a delicate probe she murmurs chance
and the deceit of darkness and light
underwater submerged upside-down smiling
and afterwards she says there is
no afterwards new territory old loss
leave the stone unturned
visible yes but still forever a lie and a loss
LOVE OF LOST TIME
Notice the tree of discarded leaves
bent by the river where a woman holds a line.
Metaphors hardly visible,
shadings of weight, pauses in tone,
flick of memory,
as the river yields light and motion
of current.
She never tried to triumph in whitewater
or upon sheer faces of rock.
Instead, fading pictures
where slouch and grace showed them
all without clothes,
sharing ripe fruit,
as, one by one, they traded images,
dropped numbered expectations
while cast off pips
bobbed drunkenly downstream.
Love of lost time is a bottomless eddy
where her line will circle and keep on circling.
FIRE IS FAVORABLE TO THE DREAMER,
Susan Terris (Arctos Press 2003)
Susan Terris 2021
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