Drunk as a persimmon
on the wine of Cana or myself, I couldn’t tell—
the old pain and the old dream mingled
and seasickness threw kisses
in shapes upon the wall like shells
upon the shore outside the conch-
shaped hall in whose pearled hum I danced
as if my feet were small
and free of gravity as sea lice.
When above the palms, horns, drums and silks
I heard a creature high in moss-
tangled eucalyptus cry for milk—
a creature not my own, yet still
my milk let down.
I looked up and it locked me
in a stare, half-child, half-marsupial,
that transfixed me on the scallop
of the terraced white hotel it squatted on
until sure that I had seen
it dove back into the lagoon
like a weasel chasing an eel
ever further into the nature of oblivion.