and from the inside in

PROPHET
A river sloshes through Egypt land,
hosts a film of frogs’ eyes, ebony, grasses,
and bamboo shoots. First verdant terrain
then sand, sand, sand . . .
She rises at dawn to pace through reeds
at the foot of the Nile. Brown skin, black hair
forced into braids, she seeks a sign from Isis
or the Sun, its telltale shifts casting equinoctial
shadows amid the pyramids with their
arterial secrets—chambers empty and dark
like a god without a heart.
She seeks a goddess with gills or scales,
hooves or horns, a jackal-headed deity
or baboon divinity, only to find a prophet.
First the distant shriek of the slave driver
and a lotus-scented breeze
then the basket, losing its way down stream,
rocking like an ark through troubled currents,
faltering forever toward the sea.
Warm water licking between her toes,
she wades into the paper-sharp glades,
risking herself within the papyrus swamp,
faltering in slime, privy of leaches and snakes.
She lunges for the woven reeds:
A child in a ratty blanket,
damp as dewed barley. His dark eyes
gaze upward. His mouth parts wide as he cries.
Inside her heartbeat is pumping the wildness
of life through her body’s tubes. Within her pith
the song begins: a gentle lullaby.
Anna Cates
64