Woman In Jail With A Week To Think

                Mildred Loving, Old Pauly Jail

                Caroline County, Virginia, 1958

Dig the sand.

Mold with limonite

and crushed midden

(discarded shell mounds,

moons in the ground).

Before the pot dries

wrap it

with knotted net

or plaited cloth,

pressing pattern on the body.

Or with reed,

inscribe it.

Punctuate

the round of the lip.

So the vessel may speak.

Topography (Is For Lovers)

                                     For my husband

we are the black Allegheny and Blue Ridge     asleep    side by side

        my old hip rises     out of an equator    where beaked dinosaurs

once grazed    too hot   we shifted    drifted over climates

        and flood zones     then rested     in Atlantic shallows

now west, we stretch    dry   and at the bed’s edge

        our legs entwine     stream loads to sea    our feet fossilize

in clam molds    you stroke my head    and as you doze

        your hand    unfolds    far   to our north

drops a tendril    of my hair    quartzone stonecurl    of marine snail

How Things Are (Not What They Seem)

Even in the way the flat cuttlefish, which is colorblind,

ripples along the English Channel,

its wake like the hem of the petticoat

that Pocahontas wore

or the scalloped riffled

edge of parchment bills,

racial integrity laws

passed on the legislative floor.

So the cuttlefish and its system of cells

can match any background when cued,

blending with algae or sand

under cover of chromatophore.

In a similar way

my children,

when tracked or tallied,

are turned from white to brown

to black or more.

Curious that while staying the same

something can be completely changed,

as with cuttlefish.

When correctly classified as mollusk,

not fish at all, but metaphor.

Meditation On Matters Of Time

When the mountain stood alone dressed in her dark trees,

the river slowed its momentum to the bay,

algae matted the sun that fed sea —

the jimmy no longer carried his she-crab.

When the river slowed its momentum to the bay,

the cownose ray lost the current of its prey,

the jimmy no longer carried his she-crab,

the bristleworm shed no eggs.

As the rays nosed, scoured for prey —

soft and hard shell clams scarce —

the bristleworm bore no eggs,

and the blacktip swam in fishless water.

But when clams hard-dig their shells in sand,

sea grasses begin to comb their soft beds,

then blacktip and bull join the basking shark overhead

and whelks whorl their spiraled shells.

When sea grasses comb their soft beds,

the river regains momentum to the bay

then the whole sea whirls, whelk-like, world-like —

and the mountain unfurls her dress of green trees.

Women Of The Chesapeake

                            For Mildred Loving

Each heart

an estuary

aorta and vein

riverine channels

cells and platelets

circulate

as though drum

and stripers

saltwater churns with fresh

in beat with the inlet sea

Now the chambers

of my heart

fill more slowly

rise

with systolic tide

your body

lies low

in the aquifer

memory of you

runs in the watershed

My thanks to the editors of the publications where these and other poems first appeared, including: Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Blueline, The Chattahoochee Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, IthacaLit, Little Patuxent Review, Subtropics and others.