As You Open the Top Drawer
Fathoms deep,
though no one knows,
some say that life began in boiling vents.
Some antsy quivering slithered up to a kind of protaand then a zoa wiggled by
and that was the stem of it all.
This, of course, was long before
the first morning that trod down the hallto the messy kitchen of the human.
Which is all just to say
how I contemplate the complicated lineageof your wide callused hand,
as you open the top drawer to the right of the stainless steel sinksearching among the clutter of the scissors,
the wine opener, the yellow corn cob pins that stab you,
for the red handled can openerso my hungry cats
will stop their demands
and the shutters of my eyes
can stay stuck for another half houras I savor the fossiled imprint
of the boney stegosaurian plates of your shoulder bladesembedded during the recent night’s muck
in the soft Cretaceous ooze of this woman’s breasts.