Thinking of Sea Trees at Sunset

Small white pills

trick the body out of her fertility--
give her false impressions
of eggs growing life,
cells dividing from the combination
of double helix DNA
swimming in the heat of her core.

Breasts swell forming a mother's cleft,
the weight of them
an implication to nourish;
muscles relax through the hips
anticipating the burden of travel
from one world to another.

And sleep covets her entirely
to protect them both from transformation,
building bones and lashes and teeth;
fingers sprouting like blades of grass;
heart beating as if a hiccup,
no more than a flutter beneath the skin.

Then the last pill, small and blue,
laughs heartily at this joke of creation,
the simplistic human need to populate,
and undergo masterpieces
of flesh and magic.

Life
falls
down
in the gravity of death,
held firm in its change,
and what's left is a river of vermilion
between supple thighs.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Counterexample Poetics 12/09