(With acknowledgement to Heather McHugh)
We crave our own lost halves since
language and land were
sundered into kind.
Africa misses South America and the Andes
pine their lost rows.
Submerged volcanoes wreaked havoc with ebb and flow, causing
convergence, divergence,
subduction and schism.
I wave to my sisters an ocean away, those,
who by mere happenstance sit
confined in hijab and hovel while
I bask in skin and sunshine.
Who can claim to hold a soul, however
firmly gripped?
The West dances its celebratory shimmy while
sisters sit shiva in the sliced-up sand.
Can I grab the rope, pulley them
back to me?
Me to them?
Upper West Side meets West Bank,
Walmart and Wailing Wall.
I inhale and wade ashore, the
salty delta squishing between my toes,
desert sand reminding skyscraper
from whence it came.
You can look about, above, for
lords and kings.
But given what we know of topography and time,
perhaps it is the goddess
whispering
behind the veil
who un-divides the continent.
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