Double Merge

—after Sam Gilliam 

To be a cloth roomed in body. 
A dress of lung, a smock of sway. 
To be a moon that stayed lit  
all day— 
I mean, a body roomed in canvas and full 
of lavender and tangerine, 
draped upon nothing but air  
and light. 
A body might  
like that. 

* 

So, then, to arrive 
at joy  
in a body 
full of breath. The almost unimaginable fact of it 
on a random summer day. There were sails, certainly.  
And sunlight. A stream cut 
through the teeth of it and all I had to do 
was lean. 

LAURA DONNELLY

Laura Donnelly is the author of Midwest Gothic (Ashland Poetry Press) and Watershed (Cider Press Review), and her recent poems have appeared in SWWIM, Colorado Review, EcoTheo Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Michigan, she lives in upstate New York and teaches at SUNY Oswego.