by Susan Elbe

If I Loved You, It Would Be This Way

Night like a giant manta ray brushes
the screens with hushed velvet wings.
Under the slant roof, in a kelp-sway of trees
I lie on a thin, cottage bed
and whether it is wind or rain blowing through,
I only know it is green,
rolling down through moss, deep
into algae, and deeper, where green declines
to the dark verdancy glyphed
in a plum or the body's first minnowing.


First appeared in Passages North