But no one alone could ever encircle
the horned head-bone of a triceratops
with both arms and draw it to the breast
for solace or soothe the moon
out of its stiff-starch routine
into an easeful rest against the heart.
An Arctic wind in a rock canyon,
with its waves and whips of snowy
dust, might likewise be considered
so deprived.

Some speak of the Sargasso Sea
as a cradle, because, in its largess,
it sways and rocks and appears to enfold
and nurture spikes and claws, fins,
fronds, slug strings, fishes
like porcupines, fishes like pipes.

Realms without names are crossed
sometimes inside the boundaries
of this cradling privilege, as when
the closed eyes wake at once to dawn
and the soul transforms itself;
as when one slight shudder shifts
the body from pulse to passion;
as when cradler and cradled suddenly
change places, passing through
one another to merge to neither
momentarily during the changing.

I don’t know which brings more faith—
to hold carefully the small blossom
of a new body and drip water like milk
from the fingertip like a nipple
into its funnels, or to dream of existing
as an open sea with ceaselessly disappearing
arms and laps of comforting currents,
or to anticipate being held in death,
as never held in life, in the crook
of a steady finger, or to imagine being
a pearl still tasting of salt, taken up
and rolled all night in the bed
of your tongue.