To forget how you tasted those leggy afternoons
when our bodies spilled
like wine across the floor,
is to admit a hawk into the house.
Is to wring a rag of water.
When I’m in the thicket
with my smaller hungers,
I don’t need to know every cave
and what it stores, cool
and damp, for you. I don’t need
to know how many nests
are lined with your hair.
There’s nothing tame about twilight,
this old song shaking the sweetgum leaves—
when I thirst I dream
like a violin waiting the bow.
— Amie Whittemore, from “Nocturne,” Birmingham Poetry Review (no. 49, Spring 2022)
The Vale of Soul-Making 