If the transformed god
had not been elegant
and mute, but rough
and noisy, no more able to float
than a cable car,
if, rather than drop,
he lay with me for a while,
tonguing each tooth
clean as a cat skull,
if he’d memorized the rise
of my back, its nobs
of fetal wings,
had he picked wild iris
in the rain,
the stems unable
to bear the heat
of his hands so I might press
the petals between my thighs,
if leaves had not swirled
around my descent,
if I’d not been broken
by river rocks, hadn’t limped
from the shore with one eye tracking
that distant mountain,
clouds ringing its summit,
my body like its melting snow.