thursday next

The Loom

I drowned in sleep.
And once my lungs were gills,
I watched my liquid shadow,
fathoms deep,
Weave through a trembling warp
of light and hope
a weft that kills.

No working hand
Had anything to do
with how the sea
Hurled itself in salt against the sand,
or how unfeelingly
The shore forgot to be the land
and mimed the sea . . .

Or how, under the dream,
One tightening thread
Gathered those crooked strokes of light
into a beam
Through which I rose—not quite
from the dead—
more from the blame

Fanned out in
Microshards of extinct species
threatening my head—
Motes that might have been
curses, or killer faces,
Had they not welcomed me, as I woke,
with human voices.