Head of Home

I find my new home in your red hair.
A houseboat
an anchor dropped in the harbor.

I can see it from shore, the mountain
crowned with first light.
Second is your spine a ridge where our shirts unstick and our eyes clear
Third blueberries grace both our mouths which do not grace each other.
my eyes see you seeing out into the distant blue and green
I want to see what you see and you; blue and green and red

[Did you go there?]
you are a place I would like to go
to hear low murmurs of a subconscious song
while fields and fields and fields and beautiful nothing rushes by.
(your silence goes on forever sometimes
my questions go unasked always)
(My apologies to her red hair
dyed slowly dying like ferns on a winter windowsill
go unsaid.
my explanations
overwhelmed under
your new curls)

(This could have been guilt
but the sunlight in a face that you have made laugh
(what did i say? let me say it again fresh)
makes a heart hope.
Guilt may come in receding summer light
like dyed hair revealing itself,
like leaves changing tinged and dying.)

Your landscape is solid rock
and I am scrambling upwards
with no hand holds no hands to hold
save the scrubby signs of life that slip your tongue
in a pizza parlor an amphitheater a waterfall
a harbor.
A strand of hair frees itself from your scalp
(under which I would like to be.
Let me up into your head,
Let me up the rocks that lead inside your skull)
to plant itself an anchor on the shore.

By Johanna Berliner