Riding a manta ray
through mangroves, small
hands small feet like
a squirrel suddenly grounded
is ready/ I have
curls from my grandmother
that cannot be kept when I am
hot and salty between waves-
a girl I remember from before
taken by a fish of peculiar shape
(I lived by the sea then) and how
I fled and how I bent hand-over-hand
around every curve by habit.
It is in my roots to see a hole and place
mouth over space and hold until
it is filled; a starving a needing
an ancestral grieving in my heart
where if there is a falling there is a
turn: my father told me
philosophy and religion
can be the same in men
it starts in a daydream/
I know in our hearts are
our own heroes.
In Due Proportion 