Stripping for Rilke


When her soul oozed out of her skin, bleeding
like a ghost of ink, my mouth stretched

wide to catch its taste, its melt, that February
day in Montreal, in the bookstore on Milton, she stripped

away layers of ice-damp wool, casting off
the heavy skins of winter, and a pale

bare arm emerged, scattering freckles
like grains of wild rice

and reaching past my amber face for Rilke’s
Duino Elegies she raised her gentle voice and read:

"Every angel is terrible, and still, alas knowing all that,
I serenade you, you almost deadly birds of the soul."


(This poem originally appeared in lichen literary journal www.lichenjournal.ca - Fall 2003.)