Michael Powell’s Women
Sam Rasnake

Give me the exotic on-her-own-can-do-
anything kind, cold rain on her face,
in from the hunt, her hounds on a leash.

Holding the deepest secret in the well
of her eyes, she carries over the shoulder
a sack of silence, and tilts to the wind

when she walks. A woman transformed,
trans-mobile, transfixed on her moment,
never praying when she needs to, always

running the circles of the vortex she calls risk—
a bit desperate, a bit immortal, but all body
in search of the one body that fits—the place,

the sound, the dream of the whole.
Give me a woman of the mountains,
her bright hair tucked under her habit,

or one bristling at all the burning possibilities
of surrender to the dark perfumes of the world.
A bold wanderer of long grass and deep soil,

afraid of nothing. A woman in motion, whirling
across an empty stage—such sweet dilemmas
as art vs. love—afraid of losing everything.

A woman certain of all the missing parts,
one wrapped in the rage of her want,
another in a reckless sea of paint—

In the scratch of brush over canvas,
in a fall from the sky,
in the raised lens of my camera.

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