Our Waterfall

A Poem by Kherry McKay

Everyone knows of the tug of the tide.

Our Waterfall

I. The Whirling

The junior grades watched

I followed her stare to the generals, the success stories

but in the end she chose me

Lovers’ prizes are radiant.

November had wanted us for its dark intentions

We joined the shadowy cult of love —it came to us

like a turn-of-the-century meteor shower,

no atmosphere, contending

The waiting fields of autumn gray, the rules of December

saw the necessity of her method,

her irresistible stillness.

I was known before I knew it.

II. The Rushing

I’d mostly ignored myself until the atoms of her body

found me. Her gift was

like soft candy stretched across my chest

An embodiment of urgency came on then (hers—mine—God’s)

Have you seen woman’s Yellow-Fire eyes?

We are merely the lightning clap

we all wish to be done like that

Those little breasts, how she used them!

Lovers must breed love

She was charmeuse around me

that first night,

her healing representing all that’s great about the bed

—the angels.

It’s like a rainy day

How the boy down the street wishes the girl would dream

only of him

The sun was like rain in her bed

I couldn’t look away from her shininess,

like dark porcelain, it was.

Her ankles perfumed my existence

the last days of the century

The arches of her feet were smooth like bridges

I couldn’t help but

expose myself. . .to their mystery. . . .

III. The Shore

We talked and talked into the night

but eventually she walked out into it.

I took this as a sign I should move on

Those few months between us, how could they

change direction?

Like an over-weighted camel

we couldn’t seem to muscle all the love

possible between us.

Why didn’t we reimburse when we loved? Why

did the end of our meaning have no meaning?

Many were hopeful for our return

for there — and there only—

women sang

of the relationship’s watery release.

IV. Eddy

In the same way day becomes night,

we ran out into the kitchen to explore each other

The changing shape of ecstasy

was all that held us together.

We drank from the wheat of our heavy, sunless days

V. Reflections

She was a petal, a sun-soaked native girl

I was her golden slave-cup

Her dark legs entwined me; I became

her chained healer. Smallness never seemed so intimate

We came without any more excitement

than the blues of her eyes

— the blue —the blue, ocean blue!

VI. Current

Overpower, yet create, my being, I told her
I took all to be her womb, one womb

It brought much satisfaction but also loneliness

Whirlpool, vortex, loss of consciousness

VII. Water Temperature

The faucet ran cold, and two people in love must be hot.

How could expressions of joy come at no expense?

They came when it was sunny — or wanted to be,
like the simple smiles children give.

She was remote and beautiful; all that remained was
for me to love myself

or grasp for a forgotten past.

She represented this tributary

VIII. Approaching the Falls

Our moments of distance

shaped our hearts in ways we couldn’t see

Yet within the rain

in the sleet of her narrow fingers, I learned

my profound lessons

They came to me whether I wanted them or not

She’d run up to me once with a sunny mouth

wanting a kiss:

These were ethics invisible, how the West was won,

that sort of thing. . . .

In the end, it’s the feeling of a pin leaving the skin.

IX. Cool and Rapid Plunge

Down, down, down

Present tense

Always too, love draining counter-clockwise

in the hemisphere of the heart

X. Pool, Underneath

I couldn’t take all this change
without first walking in the rain

looking for the face of simplicity in everything,
for that would make August make sense.

We’d given little battles of love,
took firm intentions.

My fondest memory was from one cold morning,

those sensitized legs teasing me back into bed
(the body remembers

temperatures more than reasons)

* * *

We’d taken the beginning to be clear,
undeniable evidence
we both were about to love,

but evidence is always, always deniable.

In the confusion came a certain clarity,

like the moment

underwater when “up” is discovered.

XI. New Tributaries

We’d hoped and wished for love
Now we knew
desire must wind down completely for the song to reappear
—like a silent exchange of matter

What of our lust? Our fears?
Time will be gentle to them, to us
How can lust and fear be said in the same breath,
when fear is so against our true natures
and lust, so a part of them?

I, we—must join the warm ocean

The self has loomed before us, be we loved.
Hello! My reputation for beauty is from you
Our engagement, altered to include me
Though you’re gone, so am “I.”