Adapted from Changing Place

You watch everything
invisibly
preparing
(chopping carrots for couscous over the
open brazier,
haggling in the market
dandling a child
separate
& certain
to serve is to control.

I stoop at the lintel
to enter the world of women
out of solid sunlight
into the malleable dark.

Eyes enlarge.
Shapes emerge.
Welcoming the wave
of brown hand, how tenderly


how tentatively to reach
to point of crossing
a span of white room.

Henna intricate
on your hand, each finger its own design
the palm crossed
on your feet & ankles.

You paint me as if I knew the flame
the stir of red mud in the pot
drawing me in even
when I lose the thread to difference.


The yearning as we meet
you to know, I to be.


We are each other’s fantasy.






Penn Kemp, Changing Place (Fiddlehead, 1978), with author's permission