National Poetry Month Day 11: Donika Kelly
SIGHTING: VIRTUE
Rivergate Skating Rink, Nashville, TN
The man in orbit blooms
a heart on his back.
The heart blooms
wings of water, and in me rises,
not mercy, but a sense of order.
I’ve drifted,
loosed from the one who bound me,
a planet with no anchoring star,
and I know this man
is neither god
nor sidereal body,
but neither is he a woman
with an alchemical heart.
His skin, his beard, his full breast,
enrapture me,
draw my gaze
from every other whirling body.
I’ve drifted, and I know
the man in orbit is not a man
in orbit, but one in revolution,
where revolution means “change”
or “a way of moving,”
where muscle changes to water
or moves from a state of gold
to one of lead.