Translation of a Bathroom Towel
Kathleen Kilcup
As the body
is a transmuting of light
to heat to skin
cells left on a bathroom towel
pure conversion of a wound
into an eye,
the poem
is a river
run through sand
and crab to the sea
and back
and back.
There is the language of the mouth
and the letter,
cattle drivers, fingers, midday prayer,
Glass walls wink and nod.
Scattering, scattering.
Translate back several thousand
years, before the tower
of Babel, a poem is a memory.