We fight them as we go
the way one lover fights another,
how we cling to them
until our fingertips are raw and red,
how sand and soil eat at our skin
and lungs that expand need release,
a vibrational breath, a riotous roar,
a bellow, a moan, sometimes just a sigh.
And still we fight, we squeeze and twist,
writhing in flame, in ignited air
in indifferent earth, until we are found
by water and water’s silk,
the saving dunk, the holy breath—
our arms can reach without flailing,
our backs supine without arching.
The fight, the work it takes
to float
between water and air
while rock and flame
lap and crack and sing.
Diana Rosinus is a writer and visual artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her play "Melody & Flora" recently won the second place prize in the Highsmith Drama Award, and her poetry is forthcoming in the next issue of Poecology. She is the Poetry Editor of Fourteen Hills.
| I enjoy examining the parallels between human nature and the natural world, where the body serves as a playing field (and sometimes a battle field) where both overlap. This poem is a meditation on interplay— how contrasting elements in nature and in human relationship behave when forced together, how these forces rend us apart and hold the potential to make way for something surprising and new. |
