Lake Song
By Anne Wilkinson
Willow weep, let the lake lap up your green trickled tears.
Water, love, lip the hot roots, cradle the leaf;
Turn a new moon on your tongue, water, lick the deaf rocks,
With silk of your pebble-pitched song, water, wimple the beach;
Water, wash over the feet of the summer-bowed trees,
Wash age from the face of the stone.
I am a hearer of water;
My ears hold the sound and the feel of the sound of it mortally.
My skin is in love with lake water.
My skin is in love and it sings in the arms of its lover,
My skin is the leaf of the willow,
My nerves are the roots of the weeping willow tree.
My blood is a clot in the stone,
The blood of my heart is fused to a pit in the rock;
The lips of my lover can wear away stone,
My lover can free the blocked heart;
The leaf and the root and the red sap will run with lake water,
The arms of my lover will carry me home to the sea.
