Demon Pond

Christopher Dewdney
From:   Demon Pond. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994.

You step into the crucible,
the philosophical egg, vessel
of the sun and moon. The surface
of this liquid
intersects your thigh
like a bracelet
of exaltation. Matter itself
ringing out a single
clear note.

You step into the water,
indigenous, exquisite.
Your quick grace alive
wire, eerie where I falter
in sweet sickness.
Stirring up the dreams
at the bottom of the pond.
Every gesture, the most incidental
of your movements is slender,
candid. You are perfection
doubled back on itself,
standing before me in this
labyrinthine night forest,
a cool autumn mist
over the water.

Our union is a confederacy
outside the common world.

Each other the most remarkable
being we've ever met, adored
by the adored.
The one for whom
we had abandoned hope
years before.
My mind goes anywhere
my hands and mouth travel
weightless and eager
over your radiant flesh.
Snakes aroused by humans coupling
and hallucinations of unearthly paradise
rise like ghostly moths
to the light we burn by.
Hosts of invisible beings
lap at the fiery column
that is us. Flesh a distraction
on our way to a deeper union.

Your love, your body
the knife that cut me
open to my bliss.

From Demon Pond by Christopher Dewdney, published by McClelland & Stewart, The Canadian Publishers. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

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Christopher Dewdney's works copyright © to the author.