Divination
When the man came
to dowse your parent's well,
you trusted him:
wood gnarl, shaky hand,
magnetic polarity.
We know fingers
have a kind of electricity
that might dip to water, dip to what
can't be seen, dip
to the well beneath
to divine the source
as when you drag
your fingers up my side
and the hair on my knee rises.
Divination in the pattern of the whorl
on your palm. Long life, short life,
I can't measure. You parents
don't know my name, but maybe,
I could read
the reek of their cigarettes,
your mother tending bar
your father in the easy chair,
you dropped out of college, you
went back home,
you say you moved when
you were 11, the way you were lost,
then, then, then
I'll go down into the well of your shame,
bring you out with my body
on your body.
Love Seat
On the couch, my mother's
large-buttoned pillows push us
hip-to-hip,
my leg lipped to yours,
so my body naturally nestles
a curl to your curve
like treetops in a forest
thoughtfully contain their growth
to make room for others. I think of how
this fact, the picture with light peeking
through the leaves, one tree's top shaped by another
like a mosaic, appears and reappears online,
posted again and again by humans
so taken with the idea that there's a shape
to the universe that other shapes align to,
that there's a tree language we can't speak or see.
Maybe in the reposts
we're learning how to read it?
I think love seat is a kind of language.
I don't want to write a happy poem,
but that's why I need you shaping me.
Ruth Williams is the author of a poetry collection, Flatlands (Black Lawrence Press), and two poetry chapbooks, Nursewifery (Jacar Press) and Conveyance (Dancing Girl Press). Currently, Ruth is an Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at William Jewell College.