Mist to Drink

Mist to Drink

Nancy Bevilaqua

Same sense I had a breath    a logic    music
stationary soul imbibing all the spirits in the field
just there beyond the crowing street the morning

motion where I have a mist to drink in for a minute
there is breath and I am almost sober very drunk
intoxicated in the stolen sky I wrestled to my level

just to space me make the distance go
invisible: gateless gate    unwalled territory.
You have called me and I've been thinking: stretch

my skin a little more and let me linger just outside
before the birds hush    right before the day begins
its shattering    its glassy song arrests me.

I've been waiting on your voice    a fallow Yes
and holding something I can dig with    wand
and water    comets falling into lake that no one's

ever seen but I can hear the heaving underneath:
its life    its letting in of rain   of all that light
and I can train myself to swim

never stand on shore again.

---

Nancy Bevilaqua
Poet

Nancy Bevilaqua has been published in West Branch, Prelude, Tupelo Quarterly, Whiskey Island, Juked, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Tinderbox Poetry, and other journals. In 2012 she published a memoir called Holding Breath: A Memoir of AIDS' Wildfire Days, and she has also published several volumes of poetry.

Photography by Philipp Pilz