acadia

nightfall in misty nowhere, all points north
long swallowed in the wet. loon cries swell out

of that closed throat. the black caltrops
of needled pine so vivid early in the day cluster

& lie now in their ambush & now tender footed
all my fears are going galloping. over the dock

our sweet drugged friends rest floating on, over this pond,
which goes on lapping at its same unhurried

frequency, nudges its shivers up my arms. & so
i know i am laid bare, tell me you’ve read my

each neurosis thru the membrane that’s the skin
of this wet-rubber shoulder quickening against

your own? a body’s something i’m so scared
to touch. its boundaries so tenuous. somebody

told me once, i babbled earlier (re: slime molds)
they have no cell walls, just an oozing mass of dna

afloat in its own fluid. so could that have been
the source of these swift fears? to, touching, lose

the self—her carefully kept edge—or, worse than
melding into one, a sharper fear, not to be one,

to be Other to you—some blind, fumbling, monstrous
abdomen with wings, one of these flighted pests

you wince to find bobbing into your light, would hate
to have to swat. all day in your small pale car

we drove around the coastline listening only to faye wong,
her swirling canto cover of the cranberries,

her yodeling. later she’ll turn up again as i sleep.
& then you’ll wake me, tossing suddenly in bed

your hand across my breast; i’ll tell you in the morning
you sleep violently tossing suddenly in bed

your hand across my breast; i’ll tell you in the morning
you sleep violently. what i won’t say: in another

world i’d like to be the marshy edge the current
brings the boat of you against. i will not say: will you

disturb my surface more, or muddle me. it’s true
i’ve often been your pond & you’ve sent

night sounds ringing over me. & you have thought
of me, you’ve said, of late, running myself across

the corners of your deeper crevices, rippling
against. still next to you tonight i’m crystal still.

i want only to ask the water how she knows
when, how, & with what gentleness to act?

Edíth Clare is a poet, translator, and first-year MFA candidate at the Michener Center for Writers. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, Peripheries, Twin Cities: An anthology of twin cinema from Singapore and Hong Kong, and elsewhere.