Pele's Children (Poem)

The coyotes are howling again, somewhere across the water, starved,

rabid,

mangy. My ancestors called in sick, and red, but you,

always the color of haint blue, a river those devils can't cross. So let's drink up that wildberry wine, babe, let's dance to the curse we have conjured, let's twirl to the love unearthed,

unbreakable, for in the space between us, there is never a place where that sun can't shine. And we've walked off their radar. The charts of treasure hunters, outdated, as coastlines altered, and islands and mountains sprang from the sea, like a goddess in a clam shell, like a goddess slowly stretching earth and fire down the side of a mountain to the bluest ocean. Because we bend and expand, these ancient bones, intertwined,

calcium and organ vines,

like arterial lines between us, you against me, tender.

bvk, 2021.