A woman walks to the river every day,
out of a Babylon of wild horses and insubordinate

goats, her white dress flows off her like milk.
She carries a scale and a vase and her blindfold

has slipped enough to let her see
the path that avenues through boulders

moonburst with lichen and the cave
near the apple trees draped with snakes.

She walks to the water, where her dress falls
from her, where her blindfold decorates

the stones crowding the river’s edge, where
she slides into the smoky water glowing like a moon.

The elders watch from their blind
of olive trees that smell green in the sun

and the air smells of granite and pine
and beneath the bright, too bright, sun,

the stone smells only of itself.