Mama Hydra
In her jewelry box of
Vacant shells
Rough cut gems
Scatters lights
With impatient hands
Pulls furrows
From the floor.
A carpet rippled by
Careless bare feet
The sea-bed wears ridges
calling me home.
I trust the compass
Steady marking north.
No worry whether
I follow the needle—
If I will arrive. Love
Is trusting the magnets
Letting them pull
Metal from my pores.
Permitting their gesture
To be finite in purpose,
A beacon guiding me north.
But when the moon passes
Ten thousand tides from tonight
That hand with a compass
Will point to
The under-bellied pole.
Turned over white like an
Expired fish.
Will they be wrong?
Magnets in the core swore
South. How
Could this compass be true?
My soul. My hand,
My helpless compass waits
On ridges of the seafloor
To shift again, swallow up
Old peaks and valleys,
Someday ten thousand times over
No longer constant,
Every needle set to change,
Whispering South,
Mama Hydra—inspecting her treasures—
Sends a call
For new directions…
Will you trust the compass?
–ECW
ECW Poetry 