Stone brushed our hips
In the narrow passages
Prodding down into earth,
Becoming lost to mornings,
We were swallowed underground.

Beating and churning like a heart,
The water, never kissed by leaf
Or shadow, never anything but rolling
Onyx, ran full-wind, gushed silver
And slippery black through our knuckles,
Rushed and whirred as we perched
On its bank and licked it from our palms.

We drank and will never be full;
We became the marble-eyed, finding each other’s
Hands in the dark and poems smooth
As hills in the bed of the river.