A Soul, Geologically
The longer we stay here the harder
it is for me to see you.
Your outline, skin
that marks you off
melts in this light
and from behind your face
the unknown areas appear:
hills yellow-pelted, dried earth
bubbles, or thrust up
steeply as knees
the sky a flat blue desert,
these spaces you fill
with their own emptiness.
Your shape wavers, glares
like heath above the toad,
then you merge and extend:
you have gone,
in front of me there is a stone ridge.
Which of these forms
have you taken:
hill, tree clawed
to the rock, fallen rocks worn
and rounded by the wind
You are the wind,
you contain me
I walk in the white silences
of your mind, remembering
the way it is millions of years before
on the wide floor of the sea
while my eyes lift like continents
to the sun and erode slowly
by Margaret Atwood
from Margaret Atwood Selected Poems
Simon and Shuster, 1976