This poem concludes my sixth book of Year of …… collections.
I am beginning the seventh year and excited to see what this year, Year of …….. will be!
Year of the Pearl
I am a therapist,
blah blah blah, I’ve stated it here
there and everywhere...
I am not sure if it was working
or the kind of working I did this year,
but I found myself needing idle,
slack moments,
in my closet staring at pattern
and absorbing color,
at the sink, washing leaves and peel.
I watched cooking shows and embodied
the way a cook sashayed while sprinkling salt,
the way a baker kneaded bread as though
soothing knotted muscles.
On my days off, my mind went.
I’d tuck it under my arm they way
motorcyclists handle their helmets.
Then my will,
I folded it like cloth napkins,
each yearning was added to a growing pile,
elegant, useful someday, needing of a hot iron
and creases, but not today, not yet.
Everyone thinks pearls take time.
They do, but not as much as we suspect.
A grain of sand can be an argument,
a petty grievance,
the whole skeleton shifts
because of a syllable or glance,
a tone or turn.
A natural pearl ripples the way a tree
grows rings, in concentric circles
moving out from the initial irritant.
When I stopped bleeding due to menopause,
my tissues retreated, as after a flood
the river floor is scoured,
clitoris hunkering, down into myself.
I ordered a model of a clitoris
from the crafting website Esty,
it was printed on a 3D printer in Germany.
From a rainbow of colors I choose
a baby pink clitoris.
The size of a large butterfly,
it arrived in a balsa box.
I held the model in my palm
it embodied the palm’s etched lines.
The tiny pearl we usually consider the clit,
sits at the top like a coat hook,
supported by bulbs and legs.
A figure reminiscent of the cartoon Spongebob,
my twat toy could be bestie
to the starfish character Patrick,
the character brave enough
to wear thigh high boots.
My orgasms too, went underground, underside,
they are now slow lava undulating.
Gone are Mount Vesuvius’s eruptions,
but islands are still made,
the new rock more glassine than splintered,
my life too has more glide,
there is time to evacuate.
I declare myself Mother of Pearl,
less focused on irritations.
I channel nautilus nectar, and abalone absoluteness.
My human companions become Man of Malachite,
Child of Citrine, Diamond Dreamer.
I wear a pearl bracelet to work,
when unsure how to help,
gently feel the round smoothness.