Island Spring

Always she is there on that far island
in my mind, where it is always night,
and the moon tears into a world of leaves,
and is torn. A child, she steps 
below such slashing, eyes bright 
with fear flashing out to find 
a way to move through the wayless 
dark, where the moon’s tatters lie 
strewn across thick, bladed shadow. 
Her bare wrists push leaves away 
from her face. Skin over long bone, 
they are thin as that hungry cry 
she has never yet known silent 
within her. Nothing can appease it. 
Not even the dripping spring she 
kneels to, whose water has the taste 
and coldness of the water of dream. 
Yet she will lean to drink and to fill 
the bamboo pole she has hollowed out
to hold this moment of peace back 
to the stunted hut where voices 
of a woman and a man have struggled
against each other all the night 
of her remembering. Always I will see
her so, meager of body and singing 
in the knife-ridden dark to still 
the thudding of her own heart as she
bears under black, moon-lashing trees
her quivering brimful of light.