I Am a Secret

for PixieHoff, My Cynara. My all.

In the new morning – in the small hours
when the pot of tea is first scalded
then gone cold in the saucer.

In the morning when the sun comes
to my window with birdsong and
swans fill the lake with love.

I am digging through these hills.

My thighs wet from the heather and the thistle
entwined, with my own damp love
splattered against my wool skirt,

From time spent under your pistoning fingers.

I am a secret to everyone but you.

I saw a fox today. She carried her kits
from one den to another
protecting her future.

She stopped to smell the air between us,
her nose working out the danger of me
as I sat, watching.

My skirt around my waist, my red tuft
exposed with the moon still tracing
its way through the tilting sky

As my fingers trace along my thighs
protecting their own swollen secret.

There are stones with our names carved upon them.
Though some might decode the signs,
they do not know my life as a secret,

nor my willingness to remain that way,
for you, for us, for centuries if needed.