Gatherer

She skips around light posts,
clutching at her rebellious skirt and
scaring away possums who skitter
into the shadows of the eucalyptus. They
turn to look with baleful eyes as she
stops, smirks, twirls
and moves on.

On the flat top of a mountain
she stands sentry, drinking down
the wash of the rainstorm
as if it were strong clear wine, letting it
run in snaking rivulets down her collarbone and
in streaks to drip off the tips
of her fingers.

She watches the march of a sunbeam
as it moves in all its wavering finery
across the tufts of the carpet, the
sheen of the sheets, the amber of her leg
and the bundle of her lover's sleeping form, and
casts the hours ahead of her like
glass beads clinking in a dish.

A gypsy of a poet, a fortuneteller,
in silks and tassels and mud on her toes
who can peek into the rending of life's cloth-

who, with a conjure, with an
abracadabra,
with the smallest raising of her eyebrow
or flash of her teeth, slides
moments into place with all the thriving
resonance of music,

who can sink her teeth into a mango
and bite clear down to
the seed
of the world.