This Body that Carries Us

If I touch your eyes 
will I see horizons
empty themselves 
toward breathless 
mountains?

If I touch your shoulders
will I release the song sparrows
that accompany your days? 

If touch your hands, 
will I understand why 
so many things in this world 
come in twos?

If I touch your heart, 
will I feel mornings
knocking at the door 
of your bones
with their tender 
and stormy 
promises?

Sweet net of skin, 
you have caught me too:
the birds in my blood 
are rustling in their nest.

Thus the transformation 
has begun: we have slipped 
into bark and feather, 
wing and fin, 
under the night sky 
at the moment when 
everything adds up 
to the moon.

Under the day sky 
when the salmon 
chooses her river,
the hawk chooses 
her sky.

Now we know something 
of what the body knows:
how it can expound and prophesy
in preparation for everything—

instructing us how to love this world
with all those spirits speaking their names
next to our hearts.