My Hair Burned Like Berenice

And after nailed upon the night
Berenice’s burning hair.
—W.B. Yeats, “Her Dream”

Days of rain. The drey outside my window would keel

and the wind would plunder. My heart was valent

with possibility: I could be anyone now, half woman,

half asterism. Fragmental as a new year. Patron saint

of the rutilant and cindering. I could rove incognito

to places pinned in office calendars. Too long I’d

mothered myself with the admiration of onlookers.

I was grateful to be alone in my abstraction. To be both

ignored and abraded by a coarse sky. I did not offer up

parts of me like kindling. I will not embellish a single

hemisphere. The ground bulges with a wet sound.

It is glutted with what was given. I do the wolfish work

of god and make myself again. Ripen like lichen on

the pavement. Like rain carrying the memory of lightning.

Source: Poetry (January/February 2024)