Pleasure Milker
        —Iguazu Falls, Argentina

You're the kind who stands still
in front of awful things and squints
as though you could see into
the god chambers of every atom in every
drop of water. O! Maw of Fog.
O! Foam Throat. It's hard to stare
at such a changing thing. Peel the surface
and the falls funnel back to drops,
jungles flee to seed—all that's left
is lithosphere, scarred as it is.
Nothing to blaze the fix. Which
brings you to the time of lava.
Just a girl, the earth's a short-winged
planet, hurtled shuddering
along her ellipse, humming slow
twenty octaves below middle E.
She flies low over the poor yards
of stars, fanning her boiling
organisms and polishing the dried char
off molten rock with still-glistening wings.
Soon, the ice-tipped spine. Soon, fire-
singe of feathers, a fringe of green
below the chin. By now, drenched
as a fern, you resurface to the thundering
gush of falls. You filmy pilgrim,
you pleasure milker, you open your mouth
to sing as though it were a living thing.
The old girl's gone to peat. You're slick
with rain and heat and lift your feet
into the fragile air. But there's a record here
under the white veils of the river.

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Copyright © 2013 Katy Didden All rights reserved
from The Glacier's Wake
Pleiades Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission