DORA MALECH

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Dreaming in New Zealand

I love this tongue as mine (is mine)
and would all were as I am wont
to hear here: sex, a quest, great grail,
for I hear seeks, with no sweat spent
to search that isn’t sweet, as every
beck and call’s both song and beak
with which to hold our tune. Winter
wears her well-earned warrior’s clothes,
a season wearing thinner, wetter,
colder, but still and ever green, here—
she’d not leave her leaves, not shed
what’s hers though the southerly
tried and tries to whistle them away.
And since this is my comedy
of ears, in one and in the other’s
fate’s to trip again, I’ll claim:
the body is both bread and breed,
as words well said are planted seed
and grow so where we tread is treed,
where each line read remains the reed
on which the note is played when pressed
to lips, mouth, self-ordained as priest,
weds wed to we’d and weed and so
with word grown one forever as even
the dead remain in deed, wound round
and round in these wet sheets of wind.

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